


Lois Lane Never Had it So Hard

by FunnyWings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Journalist!Castiel, M/M, Two Person Love Triangle, journalist!dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: It started with the most humiliating picture of Dean Winchester's life and just snowballed from there.When a sinister new big bad moves into Lawrence Kansas, will the local heroes (and maybe a few villains) be able to band together and save their home?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note: To avoid confusion, Dean and most other people are going to be calling Cassie Robinson "Robin." She's an important character in this, and although it's fun that in the show Dean's first love and Cas have basically the same name, it is not fun to read or write.
> 
> And if it's a bit of a Batman reference too, why not?

It all started with that damn picture.

Well, it all started well before that, if Dean was being honest with himself but that damn picture sure didn’t help.

The problem was Cassie Robinson (affectionately nicknamed “Robin” by Dean in their awkward middle school years) is a genius. The best photographer Dean had ever seen. They’d been working together at different newspapers since high school and, aside from a brief and ill advised fling between their sophomore and junior years at KSU, they’d been the perfect business partners. The photographer and the journalist, practically attached at the hip. Robin knew Dean’s boundaries, and Dean knew that if he tried to stand in the way of her dreams he would find himself knocked flat on his ass.

These two things didn’t often come into conflict. Until the damn picture at least.

“We aren’t putting that with the story,” Dean shouted at her for the umpteenth time. Robin raised an eyebrow, creating a face more intimidating than most bouncers could match on a good day. Fucking scary. Lucky for Dean (or not so lucky), he was livid enough that he didn’t care. “No.”

“It’s going in,” she said, eyes flashing dangerously. “And if you think you’re not writing every fucking word, too, you have another thing coming.”

“It’s embarrassing, Robin,” Dean said. “Jesus, it’s bad enough a million kids got that shit on their camera phones, but this-“

“This could be our big break,” Robin said passionately. “The thing that gets The Sun on the map. Lawrence isn’t exactly news central, but-“

“I’m not doing it,” said Dean. “I look like some kind of friggin’ damsel in distress-“

“Get over yourself,” said Robin. “Just because you were saved by a girl.”

“That is not why- I was not in danger.”

“You were unconscious,” Robin said skeptically. “And kidnapped. And about to be fed to piranhas.”

“Sam was going to get there in time,” muttered Dean.

“Oh, are we not still pretending I don’t know about Sam’s alter ego? Thank God,” said Robin. “That got old years ago.”

So there was a thing. A thing that had managed to get Dean and Robin straight on the editing team for The Sun out of college, no intern coffee runs necessary. That thing was the fact that Dean’s little brother, Sam was something of a-

Well, the technical term for it was superhero.

Sam called himself the Eye and he also came up with that name when he was fourteen and high, so Dean figured that explained that. Dean had convinced Sam his senior year of high school to do an interview in character and let Robin take a few shots. After that, some of Sam’s 'gifted' friends in need of a little good PR had reached out, and Dean and Robin had become the unofficial official press contacts for a number of different heroes in the Kansas area. This made Dean, and on occasion Robin, the target of more than a few villains who wanted information on the heroes Dean was profiling.

So there had been a few kidnappings. You get used to it.

The only thing different about this time was that instead of Sam or Charlie (AKA the esteemed Multiman) marching in to save Dean’s ass again (or Dean fighting his way out! That had happened a couple of times, okay?), it had been the more reclusive and never interviewed Angel.

Most heroes wore masks to protect themselves. Dean had helped both Sam and Charlie to design theirs when they’d grown into their powers, and he’d done more than his fair share to make sure that no one (except Robin) knew who they might be. It was the name of the game, considering legality and heroics were not exactly the best mix. Protecting your name and face was what kept them safe.

The Angel didn’t bother with masks, for whatever reason. Maybe she figured frequenting the skies would mean no one would ever get close enough to realize who she was. And much as Dean hated to admit it, he was kinda glad about it. Unwanted rescue or not, she was… let’s go with attractive.

So not the point, anyway.

The point was that yes, she had saved his life and yes, he was grateful. He was less grateful that she’d flown him out of another one of King Crossroad’s needlessly complicated traps - Dean was pretty sure at this point, the fucker had given up actually getting information and just had a crush on him. Sam was pretty sure Dean was full of it - only to parade him in front of the fucking city. Okay maybe that was a little harsh, but that fucking picture-

It was low angle, and already edited in black and white for the newspaper. You could make out Dean hanging limply from the Angel’s arms, her face turned towards his and her expression clouded with an emotion between concern and righteous fury. It was almost romantic the way Robin had framed it, and Dean just did not need this in his life.

“If you back out of this story,” Robin told him. “Then you’ll need to find yourself a new photographer.”

“Cassie,” Dean said. He only called her Cassie when he was pissed, and she knew it. She flipped him off, and packed up her stuff, throwing it all together with less than her usual care. She didn’t let Dean get another word in edgewise, and damn it. Dean was going to write the fucking article. He’d swallow his pride and remember that this really could put them on the map. Nothing like a public interest story to catch the world’s attention. Sensationalism it is.

Dean sighed, and grabbed his laptop. He settled into his desk and prepared himself for a late night of writing the single most humiliating piece he’d ever been forced into covering. Including the time he’d gone undercover as a stripper at KSU.

“Something wrong?”

Dean nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Don’t fucking sneak up on people, Jesus!” he said. He didn’t have to look around to know just who had spoken. The voice was distinctive enough.

“Maybe if you hadn’t been busy dramatically sighing every two seconds, you would have noticed you weren’t the only person here,” said Cas. He sat down at his own desk, the one across from Dean. Not that Dean paid much attention to the fucking bastard, of course. “I was just concerned about you.”

“I’m fine,” Dean gritted out. Look, maybe he should have given Cas a break a million years ago, and maybe half of the reason Dean hated him was because Cas had turned him down for dinner a few years back, but no one had ever called Dean Winchester a saint. “Don’t you have a shitty advice column to wing your way through?”

“If you found out your husband had been cheating on you for three years, would you write to the local newspaper asking for the best methods of ridding the Earth of his no good sorry self?” Cas asked him seriously. Dean looked up, despite himself.

“I’ll give you this much Novak,” Dean said with a wry smile. “I wouldn’t be half so nice to the crazies as you are.”

“I think I’ll suggest focused meditation,” Cas answered back serenely, something like a grin hiding behind his ever serious expression. God, it wasn’t just Dean right? The fucker was flirting with him, he knew it. Sam told him that it said something deeply disturbed about Dean’s psyche that he was convinced so many people had a thing for him, but Sam had also willfully ignored Becky Rosen’s crush on him for five years and counting, so what did he know? “What are you working on?”

Dean’s laptop slid shut in an instant.

“Nothing,” he said. Except Cas was going to see it anyway when the paper published the next morning. “Just… human interest piece.”

“Sounds both very human and interesting.”

“I hate you, sometimes,” Dean said with a snort. “It’s about my kidnapping of the week. Cassie got a great photo and she needs a mediocre story to go along with it.”

Cas’ fingers pause on his keyboard.

“You’re… writing about Angel?” he asked, curiously.

“Why, you a fan?” Dean asked. “Is it the fugly trenchcoat or the wings that did you in?”

Dean said this not at all jealously. Because it would be stupid to be mad at Cas for having a dumb crush on a superhero. It wouldn’t be like he was the only one. Dean knew for a fact that Charlie had called the Angel dreamy on more than one occasion. And it wasn’t like Dean didn’t get why. She had intense brown eyes, long dark hair, and a stare like she could see right through you.

All things Dean should put in his article, but fuck you very much he had some self preservation skills. Perfunctory was going to have to do if he didn’t want to sound like some fawning, sexual frustrated, teenage fuckwad.

“I- If you’re suggesting- I’m not a ‘fan,’” Cas said, lifting his fingers to make air quotations around the words. It was cute, in the dorkiest possible way. “Professional curiosity, nothing more.”

“It’s a puff piece, Cas,” said Dean. “It’ll get clicks on twitter. The photo’s the thing. Barely even matters what I write, as long as it’s sappy enough to match. Not like anyone’s going to read it anyway. Skim it, maybe.”

“I read your articles,” Cas said, trying to make it sound offhand. “They’re always well researched and written.”

“Gee thanks, because that’s what people want,” said Dean. “Well researched, my ass”

Dean opened his laptop and started typing. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and swiveled around. Cas was frowning at him.

“You seem… genuinely upset writing this story,” Cas said carefully. “Did anything happen to make you uncomfortable, or-“

“What, no?” Dean said. “It’s just… God, the dumb ass jokes are never going to end. I mean it was already bad, alright? I love Bobby to death, but if he asks me if I need fucking life insurance one more time.”

Cas stared at him in confusion. Dean swallowed.

“Look, it’s sexist and it’s stupid,” Dean admitted. “But getting manhandled out of danger by a girl who’s a hundred pounds soaking wet? Not a good look for a guy whose already getting a reputation. And if this story takes off the way Robin wants it to… Let’s just say I’m pretty much fucked as far as image goes.”

“You’re right,” Cas said. He paused. “That is sexist and stupid.”

“Gee thanks.”

“I’ve always thought the best journalist is the journalist who works to be as invisible as possible. Image shouldn’t be a consideration.”

“We agree on that at least,” said Dean. “And lemme tell you, it would be a lot easier to shove my ego out of the way if I wasn’t directly involved.”

Cas considered this. Suddenly he grinned.

“I could write it,” Cas said. Ah yes. There was the ambitious bastard Dean had firmly decided he didn’t like. At all. Cas was only ever nice when he thought he could get something out of it, and Dean needed to remember that.

“In your fucking dreams, Novak.”

“It was worth a shot,” Cas said with a beleaguered sigh. He went back to writing his advice column, which Dean pretended wasn’t one of the more popular features the Sun had to offer. The soft clicking lasted well into the night, and eventually Dean found himself in the headspace he needed to be in to write the story the way Robin would want it.

He woke up the next morning at his desk with an apologetic/grateful email from Robin on his desktop. He swiveled his chair to see that Cas must have left some time the night before. It was only as he sat up that he realized someone had taken the time to place their ratty old airplane headrest between his neck and the chair, likely saving him a horrible friggin’ crick in his neck for the entire day.

Dean knew how this looked, but he could go on hating Cas fucking Novak, if he wanted to, okay? Not like the freak had left his number with his weird romantic gesture anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

For once Dean was home at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. Honestly, he would rather be at the office stressing over the details with everyone else while Bobby shouted at them all to stop acting like “idjits.” If Robin hadn’t taken one look at him that morning and told him he was going home early, no ifs, ands or buts, that’s where he would be. Dean had been too tired to argue otherwise.

The puff piece had gone viral, just like Robin had thought it would. Instead of vindicating Dean’s decision to go through with it after all, Dean had been paralyzed with the size of the response. He’d spent hours scrolling through people’s reactions, and for every harmless midwestern mom who thought the whole thing was cute, there was some smartass teenager with emotional issues who thought it would be hilarious to belittle Dean’s masculinity with the cutting almost wit of prepubescence. After a while it all started to blend together, and Dean didn’t care what was being said. He just felt worse and worse about himself, and he’d had to hold himself back from biting the head off of some distant relative on his mom’s side, Gwen, retweeting a link to the article and jokingly asking @Deanthemachine67 if he had a crush.

Even now, the glow of his laptop screen was calling to him in the worst way. Instead of give in, Dean was on his third beer in an hour and resolutely watching the Real Housewives of Dallas (the best of the Real Housewives franchise in his highly professional opinion). He was also trying to remember the cool looking biker dude who had commented on his article and said the whole thing was kind of metal. If he was joking, Dean didn’t want to know because it made him feel better about himself.

It wasn’t until after midnight he got a text from Robin of her picture with Game of Thrones characters photo shopped over the faces, and felt something loosen his chest. He was being ridiculous. He knew he was being ridiculous.

He texted a quick thank you to his best friend, and tried to put aside the whole thing. If nothing else he knew he was a damn good writer, and he was going to start covering the heavy stuff one of these days. He just had to bide his time and pay his dues. Bobby already let him have pretty much free reign, and if there wasn’t much in the way of things to write about in Lawrence, Kansas, well Dean wasn’t going to be in Lawrence, Kansas forever.

Dean looked sideways at his family photos and tried not to feel the strange loneliness that came with having three separate pictures for the most important people in his life and not one in which they were all pictured together. On the far left was his father, dark eyed, imposing, and dressed in an impossibly crisp police lieutenant’s uniform. It was an old photo, and sometimes it sent chills down Dean’s spine how much his father looked like the photo of his brother that stood next to him. Sam’s high school grad robes had been too short, Dean remembers, smiling a little at his brother’s goofy grin. Robin took that photo.

On the far right was Dean’s mom, dressed in camo, sunglasses, and a confident grin. That picture was hard to look at. Mary Winchester called every week or so to let Dean and Sam know that she was alright, but as she threw herself into war zone after war zone, Dean had started to grow more and more sick with worry. She was his hero, and he dreamed of writing the articles she did. Of finding something important and making people care. Making them pay attention to all the awful things they spent so much effort ignoring.

Instead, Dean had made a career out of reporting on what amounted to local celebrities. Maybe you could make the argument that that was important in its own way, but outside of a very small group of superheroes who appreciated the work he did, he wasn’t really helping anyone. At best he was keeping the people who were helping from being dragged through the mud.

Bela and Victor got the lion’s share of the hard-hitting stories, and it wasn’t like Dean could blame them for that. Bela was whip smart, politically minded, and locally connected. Dean could outwit her any day of the week, and he could schmooze with the best of them, but Bela had something special about her that allowed her to really get in the headset of the corrupt. The way she wrote was personal, biting, and exposing. Bobby would be crazy to pull her from her position, and she knew it too. Victor wasn’t as talented as Bela, but as a black ex-cop he had a unique perspective on crime that Dean knew their readers enjoyed. His opinions were frequently complex and multi-faceted, and if he wasn’t the best writer in the world, people were willing to forgive that for the sake of his thought provoking content.

The thing was, Dean wasn’t all that interested in any of the other topics The Sun regularly reported on. Becky ran what Dean affectionately called “mindless gossip,” but was officially the goings on of people she knew with very poorly disguised identities. If Dean hadn’t known that Bobby cleared with every person mentioned in the stories before they printed, he might have been a bit disturbed. As it was, everyone knew to take Becky with a metric fuckton of salt and in very small doses. She was an excellent editor, and was worth keeping around for that alone.

The final editors for the paper were Ash, who covered tech; Pamela, who covered horoscopes and was one of the singularly most hilarious human beings Dean had ever met; and of course Castiel Novak, who wrote the advice column that had been dubbed “Ask Cas” by Becky. The name had stuck, and Dean had to admit despite the cheesiness of it, Cas did a good job. His answers were helpful, unexpected, and often odd, but beneath it all there was a dry sense of humor that took practice to pick out. Why Cas wasn’t off writing satire was lost to Dean. If Cas wasn’t such an annoying dick, Dean would even be glad they had him around.

Bobby sent out an email with a mockup of that week’s newspaper for everyone’s approval at about 2 a.m. Dean summarily scanned his story from that week, along with Robin’s excellent pictures. After the strong response to the picture that will not be named (screw Sam for making Dean read all of the Harry Potter books to him as a kid), Bobby had made the suggestion Dean write a follow up piece on the Angel that focused on a different angle. Dean had been more than happy to.

Dean reread his words carefully, happy to see that Becky had already caught most of his typos. He could always tell when she’d pre-read it, because that made it a million times easier to approve before printing time. He’d have to make sure to bring her coffee on Monday. Or Sam’s phone number if his brother did anything to piss him off.

Certain words stuck out to Dean as he kept reading. No longer focusing on the mechanics, Dean started remembering what he’d been going for while writing. Analyzing why Angel was such a matter of public interest and the relationship between information and parasocial relationships. The less people knew about her, the more they wanted to know. She wasn’t familiar in the ways other heroes were. The Eye gave interviews every few months. People knew him (too well, Dean sometimes thought). Multiman was similarly a known quantity. Angel was mysterious, reserved, and private and that drove people insane.

Dean officially approved his piece and sent Bobby a confirmation email with his minor fixes so that they were ready to print for Monday delivery. That being done, Dean was free to go back to Real Housewives. Or to sleep, he supposed. He was tired.

The thought of crashing into his bed and putting the day behind him was rudely quashed by a loud tapping at the window. Dean felt the itch of irritation behind his left eye (the same place he got migraines) and marched over to the window.

“Do I have to put out a god damn sign?” Dean said shoving the window open. “Closed for business, alright? Come back when the sun’s up.”

Dean had expected to see any number of the usuals who hit him up for decent press coverage. The Witch especially had a penchant for showing up at all hours, but Dean was pretty sure that was just because Max had a bit of a crush on him. Which was not to be encouraged, but cute as hell and Dean didn’t see much harm in a bit of flirting. Sam of course showed up when he fucking felt like it, and Charlie had spent the night getting stitched up by Dean more times than he could count. Hell, even Apollo, the teenage blonde girl who could lift a car with her pinky and who Dean kinda sorta suspected of being Cas’ niece, had showed up past midnight a time or two.

None of those faces greeted him as Dean stuck his head out the window.

Instead, perched haphazardly on the fire escape was Angel, her wings spread out for balance. She looked up at him warily, seeming to size him up before speaking. Dean felt his mouth go dry under her scrutiny, and he stood paralyzed as she watched him.

“I understand it’s late,” she said at last. Her voice was deeper than Dean had been expecting. Not masculine necessarily, but rough. Like a smoker’s voice. “Can I come in?”

Dean looked at the wings adorning her back pointedly. “You can try, I guess.”

To his shock, the wings effortlessly shrank into nothing as Angel climbed her way through the window. She landed lightly on her feet, and looked around herself curiously. Her eyes lingered on the photographs on Dean’s table. Dean felt a prickle of discomfort at her attention, and cleared his throat loudly.

“I’m guessing you’re here for a reason?” Dean asked at last.

“You guess correctly,” Angel said. “I’m here to give you a warning. Lawrence is in great danger.”

“Okay,” Dean said carefully. Angel just stared at him. “Something you expect me to do about that?” More staring. Jesus. “Why exactly is Lawrence in danger?”

“I used to do my line of work elsewhere. I made enemies, and it won’t be long until they track me down. You do very thorough work, Dean, and there are compromising details in your story about me. When I arrived in Lawrence, for one,” said Angel. The way she frowned at him made Dean feel like he was being scolded, and if what she was saying was true he kinda felt like he deserved it. He worked hard to protect the people he wrote about, and failing to have done even that hit him harder than he would have liked.

“I didn’t know,” said Dean. “I can edit the online version if-“

“I’m not angry,” she said. “And it’s too late, in any case. They know where I am, of that I am certain. If you change the article, that will put you in more danger because they will assume we’re in contact.”

Dean frowned.

“Wouldn’t they just… assume that anyway?” he asked. “You’re the only hero in a hundred mile radius I’ve never interviewed. But since you jumped in out of nowhere to save me, they might think we know each other, anyway.”

“It is a concern,” said Angel. She paused a moment, her eyes narrowing. “You don’t sound very grateful. About my saving you, I mean.”

“Is being grateful a requirement?” Dean asked. He was glad Angel’s superpower didn’t seem to be laser eyes, because he had the feeling she was staring at him with the intent to burn him to a crisp.

“No,” she said, looking away from him at least. Dean let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and what was it with this girl that had him so on edge? “But it is appreciated.”

“Well, then, thanks,” Dean said, pausing long enough to see her nod at him. And then: “For nothing.”

And if that didn’t ruffle her feathers a little. Figuratively, he meant.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I didn’t need you swooping in and carrying me off,” said Dean. “You’ve been around the block long enough to know I already have my own annoying rescue squad. I would’ve been fine.”

“The King’s trap malfunctioned,” said Angel flatly. As she spoke she stalked towards him, cornering Dean in a way that was half scary and half reminding Dean about all those twitter comments about Angel being a hell of a good looking girl. "That's not even mentioning that as thanks I had my location outed to my enemies in the story you wrote about my saving you. I may not need your gratitude, but I will demand your respect.”

Dean swallowed hard. He carefully raised an eyebrow and tried for a teasing tone, though he wouldn't be surprised if he sounded a bit more squeaky than he usually did. “And just how demanding can you be?”

“You’re an idiot,” said Angel, standing down with a dramatically pissed off sigh.

“But a charming idiot, right?” Dean tried. He caught the aborted beginnings of a smile before Angel swung herself out the window and disappeared into the night. The way her lips had twitched, that slight give in her reserved personality itched at the back of Dean’s head as achingly familiar. He pulled at the feeling, but the harder he tried to remember the further the thought fled from his consciousness. He sighed and let the unsettled feeling go.

Unfortunately, Dean wasn’t tired anymore. In fact he was the kind of keyed up that meant he wasn’t going to be getting to sleep any time soon. Instead of lying awake, Dean decided he might as well look over the stories his peers had written.

Dean skimmed through Pam’s weekly horoscope (“Aquarius: Get fucked, Dean”, just like it said every week. Bobby usually changed it to some mumbo jumbo before publishing, but sometimes he forgot). Bela and Victor’s articles required closer reading, and for once Becky had abandoned the gossip and put forward an interest piece about how SucroCorp was opening a Biggerson’s in Lawrence and how that would ruin the small town charm. Dean knew for a fact that Becky had to down a Starbucks coffee every morning before she could form sentences properly, so he wasn’t so sure what she meant with this "small town" charm she supposedly wanted to save, but whatever. Ash’s piece was techy enough that it went over Dean’s head, so he mostly skimmed that too.

He saved Cas’ for last, and nearly burst out laughing at his response to some homophobic mom’s letter in which she expressed concern for her son’s interest in David Bowie music videos. It was almost like he could hear Cas’ voice while he was reading, and the dry son of a bitch was putting down the most backhanded, sarcastic advice that Dean had ever seen. He’d also managed to sprinkle no less than six song titles naturally throughout the piece as well, and had ended the whole thing with a heartfelt little note about Bowie being missed by his old fans, and his gladness that new people were still discovering him.

Sometimes Dean wondered how the incredible guy who wrote shit like this could be the same fucker who’d tried to get him fired on two separate occasions. Only Bobby and Robin knew about that, and Dean hadn’t mentioned it to the others in case they turned against Cas. Maybe that was more than Cas deserved, Dean didn’t know. It just didn’t make sense to him, the way Cas acted sometimes.

Dean supposed people could contain multitudes, and frequently did. Hell, look at Charlie. Still, he wished he could have an honest to God conversation with this version of Cas sometime. The one who stood up for gay kids, and empathized with would be homicidal ex-wives, and just in general seemed in tune with the organized chaos that was humanity.

Maybe if Dean hadn’t asked Cas out the day he met him, he’d have been able to get to know that part of him. It was too late to worry about that now, though.

Dean looked at the clock to find it was now four in the morning and he decided it was late enough to be worth trying to get some fucking sleep. He could start trying to make sense of who exactly the Angel’s enemies were in the morning. Hopefully, bad guy of the week could wait until then, because Dean was not in the fucking mood to be kidnapped again.


	3. Chapter 3

Sundays were meeting days, in which everyone decides what they are going to be writing for next week’s paper. Everyone pitched their ideas, and Bobby usually approved them unless they were dumb or he didn’t like them. Bela had pitched a story covering the lead up to an upcoming local election which was quickly approved. Dean tuned out as Ash and Becky started haggling with Bobby about their ideas, and found his eyes wandering the room. To his surprise he found Cas looking right at him. The moment Cas saw he was looking back, he quickly turned his head elsewhere. Dean supposed that the once over was flattering, but not exactly something Cas was in the habit of.

“Dean,” Bobby said at last, drawing Dean’s attention back to the matter at hand. “Story. Now.”

“Yeah, actually I was going to-“

“We were going to write a story together,” Cas interrupted, causing Dean’s mouth to fall open in shock. “I wanted to follow up on Becky’s story about Biggerson’s and SucroCorp and Dean said he was also interested. I’ll still cover the advice column, of course.”

And Bobby didn’t seem to be buying that bullshit for a second. His eyes shifted to Dean, narrowing quickly.

“That true, kid?” he asked. Dean looked at Cas, and then mutely nodded. “Dean?”

“Yeah,” said Dean quickly. Too quickly, honestly. “Cas, uh, he called me up this morning asking for advice. We figured you’d be more willing to go for it if we worked on it together.”

Bobby stared at him for a long minute. Dean didn’t back down.

“Fine,” he said, clearly having not fallen for a single word. “Approved. But Dean, I still want you to write something in case this falls through. Make it short if you need to. We haven’t gotten an interview with the Eye in a few weeks, if you’re hard up for ideas.”

Dean rolled his eyes and relaxed back into his chair. He caught Cas mouthing a ‘thank you’ in his direction and Dean weakly gave him a thumb’s up in return. So that explained Cas watching him earlier. He was obviously trying to gauge Dean’s mood and whether he’d go along with his damn scheme. It wasn’t like Dean didn’t know that Cas had been trying to get better stories than the fucking advice column for a while now, but this seemed below board. Cas knew Dean had something of a crush on him, and it sucked that he was taking advantage of that just to advance his career.

As the meeting wound down, Dean did his best to give Robin the brush off. He knew she would ask him what the fuck he was doing working with Cas, and he didn’t have an answer and didn’t feel like trying to get creative. Not like he’d gotten much sleep, what with late night visits from a mysterious (read hot and weird) superhero. Robin wasn’t having it, and Dean was pretty sure he was in for the lecture of his life as she clung stubbornly to his side on his walk toward the door.

“Dean?” Bobby called out from his office. Dean froze. It was almost too good to be true. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

Dean knew that Bobby was probably going to get on his case for the same thing as Robin, but he’d take a smack down from his boss over a smack down from his best friend any day of the week. She knew him too well, and had a bad habit of pushing at issues until Dean snapped. Bobby wasn’t exactly gentle, but he knew when to pull his punches. It was a relief to wave a fuming Robin goodbye as he walked back to Bobby’s office and sat himself down.

“Yes?” Dean asked expectantly. Bobby shifted in his seat, and for the first time since Dean had met him, he looked uncomfortable.

“Dean, I’m going to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer, but I’m starting to get concerned,” said Bobby seriously. “Are you and Novak seeing each other?”

“I wish,” Dean said, before turning bright red. “I mean-“

Dean was out, but he didn’t exactly bring up the fact he was bi, and especially not to older gruff men who were in charge of his paycheck. Not that he didn’t love Bobby to death, it was just… you never knew. People who seemed reasonable could turn out to be complete assholes if you gave them chance. A lot of the time, Dean decided not to give them chance.

“It’s not a problem if it’s not a problem,” Bobby said before Dean could think to say anything else. It was a slight weight off Dean’s shoulders that Bobby didn’t mind (and why should he mind, but again you never knew for sure). “But Novak has come to me multiple times complaining about you.”

“We sorted that out,” Dean said, even though the way they’d sorted it out is Bobby had told Novak he wasn’t going to fire Dean. Twice. The offenses had been minor, but not exactly ridiculous. The first time Cas had complained it had been about Dean’s obnoxious behavior towards him in the office and his tendency for using his pens to play drums on his desk while Cas was writing despite repeatedly being told to stop. Which, okay he had done and it had partly been a way to get back at Cas for the snobby way he’d turned him down so maybe that first complaint had been mostly valid. The second had been when Dean showed up late for work a week in a row, but that wasn’t fair because it had been when King Crossroad had almost successfully infected the city’s water supply with an illness only he had the antidote to. Dean had been helping Sam and Charlie plan their attack on him, and even the Witch and Apollo had gotten involved.

That had actually been the first big crime Angel had helped stop, too. Dean remembered because he’d written an entire article speculating about her the week after.

“Dean-“

“It’s been fine for a while,” Dean said. He didn’t know why he was being so defensive. It wasn’t like he didn’t know Cas was using him. “He just… he needed to get used to me after those first couple of months.”

“His most recent complaint was a few weeks ago,” Bobby said gently. “He said he suspected you hadn’t done your due diligence on an article you were writing and asked that I pull it from publishing.”

“He- He did that?” Dean asked. He remembered Cas’ offhand comment about him always putting so much research into his work and wished he could go back in time and punch him in the freaking face. “You know I would never-“

“I know, kid,” Bobby said, holding his hands up to calm Dean down. “I said about the same thing to Novak. He took the hint. I just want you to be careful, because for whatever reason that man has it out for you.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Dean. On the outside not much had changed, but on the inside, Dean was seething. How dare Cas go behind his back like that and then just expect Dean to go along with being freaking ambushed during the pitching meeting. What the hell was wrong with him?

“Look after yourself,” said Bobby. “That’s one thing you’re gonna need to learn if you want to make it big, which I know you do Dean. People are going to try to take advantage of you, and you can’t let ‘em.”

“You think I should back out of the story?” Dean asked. He didn’t want to, really. If anything he wanted to shove Cas’ face in just how good at fucking research he could be. Or something.

“No,” said Bobby. “But I do think you should take this time working with Novak to figure out what kind of man he is. I think that’ll be helpful to you in the long run.”

“I guess,” said Dean. “Can I go now?”

Bobby nodded, gesturing towards the door to his office with a careless wave of his hand.

Dean left in a foul fucking mood, and when someone grabbed him to drag him into an alleyway, he lost it. Whoever had decided that now was a good time to try to catch him unawares was about to get the beat down of a lifetime.

Or at least that’s what he thought until he saw a familiar pair of brown eyes looking warily up at him. His fist paused where it was raised ready to hit her, and he quickly let go of the fistful of hoody he’d grabbed out of reflex.

“Angel,” Dean realized out loud. “Your wings are gone again.”

She was wearing a hoody and sweatpants, which were as good as an invisibility cloak. Not exactly head turning gear and Dean was pretty sure that was on purpose. She was dressed to fade into the background.

“They can be… conspicuous,” said Angel. “I thought I would walk you home. To make sure you were safe.”

“Is this that danger you were warning me about?” Dean asked. Angel shrugged, tugging Dean along the alley and towards another little used road. No cameras, Dean noticed after a second. Not surprising that she knew which areas of town didn’t have security cameras, but it did make Dean feel a bit uneasy. “How do I know you’re not the dangerous one?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You show up in the middle of the night, all ominous. You’re walking me home,” said Dean. “You were never all that interested in me before you saved my life. Now you’re pretty much a stalker.”

“I was lying low. You’re a reporter,” said Angel. “Of course I was interested. I couldn’t risk being found and the best way to avoid being found is to stay off the radar.”

“You never considered just quitting the hero business?”

“I considered it,” said Angel. “It didn’t take. And I’m not a stalker, I’m just worried.”

“Think that will hold up in court?” Dean asked. He was joking at this point, but still on edge. Angel didn’t talk to anyone, even other heroes. Breaking her long-held solitude and silence like this was a bad sign, even worse than he’d thought it might be last night. “Maybe if you gave me a hint of who exactly to look out for…?”

Except they’d already arrived at Dean’s building, which seemed to be Angel’s cue to get the hell out. She nodded at him tightly and swiftly disappeared back down another side road. Which, yeah thanks, super helpful and not at all cryptic.

At least Dean could try to get a nap in before he had to call Cas and work together on their article. Maybe he could sleep away a bit of the rage that was burning low in his gut. Probably not, but Dean figured that it was worth a shot.

Unfortunately he opened his door to find he had two very unwelcome visitors.

“I’m going to shoot both of you one of these days,” Dean said, sitting down heavily on the sofa as Sam and Charlie made themselves more at home. “What the hell is it?”

“First of all, you didn’t hear this from me,” said Charlie. Dean raised an eyebrow. “I don’t mean you didn’t hear this from Multiman, you didn’t hear this from Charlie Bradbury.”

“Okay?” Dean said hesitantly. “Off the record, got it.”

“I told you how I got that new security job a couple of weeks ago, right?” Charlie asked. Dean shrugged, nodding. “Mostly I’m just doing IT shit, but my boss caught me at one of my side projects and he tried to blackmail me into doing something kinda shady.”

“Tried to?” Dean asked.

“I told her to go for it,” said Sam. “Play the long game to earn his trust and see if it paid off. Which it did.”

“How exactly?” Dean asked, eyes narrowing.

“So this next part is complicated because the security company I’m working for has stocks owned by Haven International, which is a subsidiary of The Family Company, Inc, which was recently bought by SucroCorp, pending congressional approval for the merger,” said Charlie. Dean frowned at her. “Basically what I’m saying is, the connection between us and SucroCorp is pretty fucking thin, and I found out a couple of days ago that the CEO of SucroCorp had been in contact with my boss, who is basically a nobody on the chain of power. And that was weird enough that I started doing some digging. I didn’t turn up much, but what I did turn up isn’t good.”

“How not good is not good?” Dean asked. Charlie grimaced.

“Mayoral elections are coming up,” said Charlie. “And apparently SucroCorp has taken an interest on the down low. None of the donations can be tied directly to them officially, but I looked into their finances and some of their expenditure matches up exactly with the money Zach Adler has been getting. That’s a weird amount of interest in Lawrence, Kansas for an international corporation with bigger fish to fry.”

“And not that I don’t like Biggerson’s as much as the next guy,” Sam said, frowning to himself. “But I’ve been getting a really strong wrong feeling ever since they made the announcement they’d be opening one here.”

“How wrong?” Dean asked. Sam’s superpower was mostly the ability to sense good and bad decisions. He’d described it once as trying to be able to see the future while blindfolded. It might be annoyingly vague, but Sam was powerful enough that he was always worth listening to when it came to what you should do next. He also always won in a fight, because he could sense what his opponent was going to do before they did it. He instinctively knew what he had to do to win. Maybe it wasn’t as cool as being able to split himself into multiple like Charlie could, but it was still pretty damn useful.

“Increasingly wrong,” said Sam. “We weren’t going to bring you in on it until we got something more substantial, but when I thought about it, it seemed like the thing to do.”

“And killer instinct is kinda your thing,” Dean said. “Okay, well good news. I’m working on a story with Cas this week about SucroCorp, so I’ve got a good Bobby approved excuse to be looking into them. I can keep you guys updated.”

“Wait, Cas like the Cas?” Charlie asked, focusing entirely on the wrong thing in Dean’s opinion. Sam took in her tone and then frowned at Dean suspiciously. “As in the Cas who tried to have you fired that one time?”

“Two times,” Dean corrected. Sam looked even more suspicious. “And… Look, I’m not really looking for advice about my life choices right now. I’ll be careful about Cas, and you two idiots need to be careful looking into this. Sam, if your gut is telling you a shit show is coming, listen to it.”

“Okay,” said Sam. “But make sure you keep Robin around. I trust her to watch your back more than this Cas guy.”

Which was fair, actually. But that also meant Dean was going to have to do some groveling to make Robin see reason about the whole working with Cas thing. And maybe admitting that she was right about it being a terrible idea. And not to be a jackass or anything, but Dean really didn’t like giving Robin ammunition against him. Still, he supposed it was inevitable. And then after that he still needed to get in contact with Cas and figure out a way to manipulate him into doing a way more investigative angle for this article. So two really fun conversations were about to be had, and Dean really didn’t want Charlie and Sam to be on the other end of the bitch fit he was probably going to throw when it was all over.

“Alright,” Dean said, trying to suppress a world weary sigh. “You guys clear out, I’ve got to make a few calls.”


	4. Chapter 4

Dean had arranged for Cas and Robin to make their way over to his apartment on Monday morning and followed up with Bobby to see if they could spend the week out of the office working on the story. Since a lot of their work was going to be investigative, Bobby had agreed without the usual skepticism he tended to throw Dean’s way. Not that Dean didn’t get he requested working outside the office a lot. But hey, someone needed to make sure Sam’s butt stayed out of the frying pan with the villain of the week, and Charlie had a soft spot for a certain redheaded villain who could shoot fire out of her hands.

Sam had gotten burned a couple of times, and Dean had made it more than clear that banter did not take place over looking out for your goddamn partner. He’d actually maybe overdone that lecture a little because Charlie had already looked guilty about letting Sam get hurt and had only drooped further and further down the longer Dean had told her off. She’d also switched off dealing with that particular villain with Max, which meant that Sam and Charlie had been almost exclusively dealing with King Crossroad for over a year now.

This development had rapidly escalated the amount of times Dean got kidnapped, and honestly he’d rather Hellgirl lobbed a ball of fire at him every once on a while during his morning commute than deal with whatever weird courtship the King thought he was pulling off. Sam still insisted it wasn’t like that, but Dean couldn’t remember the last time King Crossroad had even tried to get information out of him during one of his kidnappings.

And speaking of being interrogated, Dean was drawn from his thoughts from a sharp rapping at the door. Robin, definitely Robin. She pushed past Dean the moment he opened it, looked around, and then pinned him down with a disapproving glare.

“It’s actually good that we’re on the SucroCorp story because Sam thinks-“

“I don’t give a crap,” said Robin. “Novak is a liar and a manipulative bastard, and you need to stop letting him use you like this.”

“I’m not letting him use me,” said Dean defensively. “If anything I’m using him to get intel I need. Sam said he had a bad feeling about Biggerson’s moving into town. Cas wanted to do this story for whatever reason, why not let him do some of the research I was going to do anyway?”

“Maybe because he’s a fuckwad who thinks he can play you like a fiddle and you’re fucking letting him?” said Robin. “And if you give a two faced, backstabbing asshole an inch, they’ll take a pound of flesh, and it’ll be your fault for trusting them.”

Dean looked away from Robin, trying to wave off her concerns. He wasn’t sure why he was still giving Cas even the barest benefit of the doubt, but despite his anger he knew that there must be some explanation. There had to be more than met the eye there, because people don’t write like Cas without something deeper holding them together.

And speaking of meeting eyes, Dean froze as he looked at the door he’d left wide open when Robin had barged her way in. Standing there in the doorway was Cas, looking between him and Robin with an expression that seemed regretful, if not ashamed.

“Two faced seems a bit extreme,” Cas said mildly. Robin’s head snapped in his direction so fast, Dean was surprised she hadn’t broken her neck. “If I had another face, why would I be wearing this one?”

Dean cleared his throat, ignoring the weak joke (seriously, had Cas ever looked in a fucking mirror? Jesus).

“You been standing there long?” he asked, hoping Cas’d missed a thing or two about Sam having bad feelings. It wouldn’t do for Cas to figure out who the Eye really was. The less people who knew, the better.

“I only caught the tail end,” said Cas. He seemed less angry about the abuse than he was resigned, and once again Dean had a nagging feeling that there was something wrong about the way Cas was acting. If he was a just a jerk, he would get defensive or cruel or… something. He wouldn’t look weirdly upset about what Robin thought of him. “Speaking ill of your coworkers is a poor habit.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t you know?” Robin said. She probably wouldn’t have said half of what she said to Dean to Cas’ face, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t stand by her words. She’d meant every one of them. “We both know you tried to get Dean’s story pulled. So try me again when you have a fucking ledge to stand on, asshole.”

Cas’ eyes widened a moment in realization, then flicked to Dean. He looked sorry, and not the fake kind people looked when they’d been caught doing something they knew was wrong and wanted to get away with it. Either Cas was the greatest actor on Earth, or Dean’s common sense just went screwy around him for some reason.

“I… I don’t have a good explanation for that,” Cas said quietly. “A moment of madness, maybe.”

“At least you didn’t try and get me fired this time,” Dean muttered to himself. As much as he was willing to give Cas the benefit of the doubt despite everything, he wasn’t willing to listen to weak lies. Cas sighed and looked him straight in the eye this time.

“You harassed me for two weeks when I first met you,” Cas said angrily. “I was more than justified in complaining to Bobby. And as for everything else… I may have been unfair but I have my reasons and I don’t owe either of you an explanation. Hate me if you want, and I understand if you can’t forgive me. But right now we have something more important to be doing.”

“Your sudden interest in SucroCorp?” Robin asked skeptically. “They open a Biggerson’s here, so what? No one’s going to stop eating at Rhonda’s so they can go to some corporate fast food joint masquerading as a real restaurant.”

“It’s not a sudden interest,” said Cas. He strode forward past Dean and Robin, and opened his bag. Folders full of packets were opened and spread across the table, many of them thoroughly highlighted and annotated. Dean picked one up and started leafing through it. Once he realized it was inside emails from Dick Roman himself to some of his lower branches, he read more closely and nearly dropped the packet he was holding when he saw some of the instructions Roman had sent out. He looked up at Cas, surprised even more by the grimly angry stare he was aiming at the work he’d done. “That’s from two years ago while I was living in New York. I had five sources willing to go on record against Roman and SucroCorp.”

Dean started. On the record? A story like that would have made Cas a household name. And from what Dean could tell by skimming through all of the information Cas had amassed, he had more than enough to sink Roman and his company too. Hell, there was enough for an open and shut case for criminal charges. Some of the correspondence and numbers proved tax evasion, while other emails were highly suggestive that food at select chain locations was being laced with drugs in order to test the effects of drugs that were in development, all to save the costs involved with multiple animal and human trials. That wasn’t even getting into the multiple disappearances and deaths that Cas’ sources had linked to SucroCorp, and the interference in the politics of the United States and other sovereign nations.

“Cas, why didn’t you publish this?” Dean said, staring down at the fucking masterpiece in his hands. Dean knew Cas was better than he gave him credit for. He knew that Cas should get better stories and the reason he didn’t was because he was new and Bobby didn’t like his attitude. But this was next level investigative work.

But when Dean looked up, he saw no modesty or denial or anything else. Cas knew just what he had his hands on, and it wasn’t lack of faith that had stopped him. No, if the haunted look in his eyes was anything to go by, something terrible had happened and Cas had cracked under the pressure.

“I…” Cas began looking away from him. Robin looked up from where she too was scanning the evidence, all previous animosity forgotten when she’d sniffed out the smell of a good goddamned story. “I… I lost a source.”

It’s not the whole truth, Dean can tell that much. But it’s enough for Dean to read between the lines. Roman had arranged someone’s mysterious disappearance to scare Cas off, and it had worked. It had worked so well that Cas had left a promising career in New York City to live in the middle of Kansas.

“I didn’t even say goodbye to most of the people I knew. I just left, and hoped Roman would leave me alone,” Cas said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was so lost. Jimmy and Amelia let me stay with them for a while, and I couldn’t force myself to go back. Lawrence became a new home for me.”

“And what about the people you left to suffer?” Robin asked him. Dean turned to stare at her sharply. “Roman had two more years to do this shit, and you could have stopped it.”

It was a low blow, and Dean didn’t think that comment existed in the realm of what was fair. Cas seemed to think so too, because mixed in with his guilt was an expression of cold question. His expression seemed to be asking Robin what she would do if it were her, and even though Dean knew Robin would have gone through with the story if it fucking killed her, that didn’t make it the right answer.

“There were other complicating factors,” Cas said at last. “My credibility would have been questionable if they were to come to light.”

Well, that was shady as fuck. Cas seemed to realize it to, because he just sighed when he saw the way Dean and Robin were looking at him.

“I am not asking you to trust me,” Cas said. “But I am choosing to trust you, and I’m sure you’re both more than capable of putting aside your personal dislike of me. This is more important than past disagreements.”

Dean glanced sideways at Robin, and caught a slight nod in his direction. If she was game, Dean could be game too, but it bothered him immensely that Cas was still holding something back. There was something Cas was hiding, and Dean had the strangest feeling that if he looked hard enough he could figure out what it was.

“Where did you think we should start?” Dean asked.

That is part of how he ended up sitting in an office chair in front of Zach Adler, smiling blandly as he went on and on about his mayoral campaign. It was an effort to keep it on straight, since Zachariah had more than a few twisted views about more than a few topics, and it was hard not to want to punch the guy. He went on at length about how Lawrence’s homeless services, education initiatives, and efforts to switch public buildings to greener sources of energy were such a waste of time and money.

But there Dean was, carefully making sure Adler got comfortable with him. Dean had always been good at getting people to say more than they meant to say. To get people to open up to him. It was one of the reasons he found Cas so interesting and frustrating at the same time. He always kept such a careful distance from Dean, almost practiced, and then he would go ahead and do something either incredibly thoughtful or incredibly rude that suggested Cas cared more than he was letting on. Dean almost wished he had Sam’s foresight so he could figure out what version of Cas he was going to be dealing with on a daily basis.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Winchester?” Adler said, bringing Dean back to the moment. Dean immediately put the easy schmoozing smile back on his face.

“Sorry, I spaced out for a second,” he said, playing off his momentary lapse in concentration with ease. “Long hours. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you.”

“I work hard,” Adler said readily. “I’m the hardest worker I know. It’s how I got where I am today.”

Dean was pretty sure tens of thousands of dollars donated by SucroCorp hadn’t hurt either, but he didn’t say that out loud. Instead he concluded the interview and moved to make small talk. He was relieved when Adler was the one who suggested a drink. It was better if he thought it was his idea to have Dean stay longer than necessary. To talk longer than necessary hopefully.

“You know, I like you Dean,” Adler had said on his third drink in. Dean had kept up, if only to keep up appearances, and was actively making sure he appeared drunker than he actually was. Passing off being a lightweight would ensure he would remember everything Adler said to him. “You’re ambitious. You’ve got hunger in your eyes.”

“I wanna prove I’m worth something,” said Dean. “I wanna write something I’m proud of, something that helps people.”

“I could help you with that,” said Adler. Dean’s skin began to crawl at the way Adler was looking at him. The intense interest wasn’t romantic or sexual, thank fucking God, but something entirely different. Almost fatherly, in a God complex way. Like Adler wanted to reshape Dean in his own image. “I have connections. People that could help to move your dreams along a little more quickly.”

And this was the opening Dean had been hoping for.

“What kind of connections?” he asked. And Adler played right into his hands.

“Let’s just say you don’t get the kind of money you need to successfully overturn an incumbent without greasing a few wheels,” Adler had said. Luckily for Dean, Adler went on to say a lot more than that.

By the time he left, Dean had more than enough information to put together a clear picture of what SucroCorp’s potential interest might be in Lawrence, and it was enough to put him even further on edge. They were interested in increasing tensions between heroes and government forces, ideally at the expense of superhero work and the superheroes themselves if they could be caught.

Adler hadn’t seemed to have connected the fact that The Sun was always reporting on superheroes to Dean’s name (likely because he didn’t actually bother to read the damn thing). He’d laughed at Dean’s expression when he mentioned that fateful photo that had gone viral of him being saved by Angel, and assumed that Dean shared his distaste for superheroes. At that point, there was nothing holding Adler back from detailing large parts of his plans to turn public opinion against heroes. Dean carefully prodded him along, passively agreeing in a way he could tell Adler enjoyed. It was obvious that what Adler liked best of all was the sound of his own voice.

Dean mulled these new discoveries over as walked down the street, he heard footsteps behind him. He froze, listening carefully for a moment before beginning to run as fast as he could down a few side streets, and ducking into the shadows of a doorway. He wouldn’t be seen from the direction he’d been running, and he had a clear view of the opening to the other side of the street.

He didn’t however, think to look up.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” said a deep throaty voice above him. Dean nearly had a heart attack, and leaped down the steps, turning his ankle as he did so. He let out a loud shout, causing someone’s dog to start barking at him. Angel landed beside him, her expression twisted into concern. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Dean hissed, shrugging away her helping hands. “I don’t need you following me around.”

“Wouldn’t you rather it was me following you around than people who would want to see you hurt? Or worse?” she asked hesitantly. “You have friends that could be looking out for you, but you choose to walk home at night alone.”

“It’s never been an issue before,” Dean muttered to himself.

“You’ve never been this vulnerable before,” she told him. Dean struggled to get to his feet without putting any weight on his ankle. Angel effortlessly pulled him into a standing position. Dean put his arm around her shoulder and as she straightened up, she seemed to almost grow to the perfect height to support him. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, trying to figure out if it was some kind of optical illusion. She said nothing about it. “I’m sorry for following you.”

“It’s… it’s fine,” Dean said after a second of thinking about it. He glanced sideways at Angel and felt a blush creeping up his face. Her arm was around his waist to support him as he hobbled home, and the way she stared back at him with her deep brown eyes was making him a little weak at the knees. Her face was almost inhumanly pretty, and Dean couldn’t look at it long. “So these enemies of yours… wouldn’t happen to be related to a billion dollar corporation with a megalomaniacal CEO, would they?”

“They’ll have recognized me from your photo,” Angel confirmed, her expression shifting quickly into an angry glare at nothing in particular. “But there’ll be a new Biggerson’s in town, so I suppose the ensuing destruction will be worth it.”

Dean was starting to piece together Angel’s side of the story. She had been a hero somewhere else, belonged to a different city and been chased away by Roman’s goons. Then, instead of lying low she’d decided to help people again, because she couldn’t help it. As the mystery around her faded, the anger Dean had nursed against Angel faded. Replaced by it was respect and understanding at the situation she had been put in, and the fact she had chosen to protect others above protecting herself.

Sure, it had brought a threat down on Lawrence, but she had been trying to avoid that. That was the reason why she had wanted to stay far away from him, had been frosty towards him whenever she worked with the Eye and Multiman to stop something neither could stop alone.

“You should have told me,” Dean said to her. “I would have protected you if you’d just told me.”

“You have a career to think about,” she said, just as wry as her comment about Biggerson’s. Dean stopped walking, and Angel only had to drag him a few steps before she realized her mistake and turned to look at him. “Yes?”

“My first priority has always been that the people I report on are safe,” he said to her flatly. “Always. I never printed a word that would put anyone in danger, and I made sure of that every time.”

“I know,” she said after a second. “I’m sorry. I realize people have hurt you to get information before, and you’ve never given in. I don’t mean to question your integrity. It was just a risk I didn’t want to take. You’re so eager for success, Dean. I suppose I didn’t want to know if that outweighed your morality. So I said nothing, and now everyone will pay for it.”

“You don’t trust me even a little,” Dean said. Which come to think of it, how could she? They barely knew each other. But she was so familiar, even the way she spoke. The cadence of it, if not the voice. Something was nagging at Dean, but he was finding it hard to focus with the way Angel’s breath felt against his neck a permanent reminder that she was standing so very close to him.

“Maybe I do trust you, and that’s why I’m cautious,” she said, some humor making it’s way into her voice. “With power like yours, it’s better to take be careful of one’s immediate reactions.”

Dean frowned at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your power,” she said again, as though it were obvious. Dean just stared at her. The dawning realization on her face was matched with a strong dose of disbelief. “There’s no way that you don’t know what you can do. Everyone likes you.”

“I’m a likable guy.”

“Everyone,” she repeated, stressing the word. “People tell you things that go against their own self interest. They’re drawn to you like you’re a magnet. When I first came here, I asked about the man who wrote about heroes and everyone who knew you had nothing but good things to say.”

“That doesn’t make it a superpower,” said Dean. “And not everyone likes me.”

“Name one person who doesn’t,” she said.

“One of my coworkers really seems to hate my guts,” said Dean, not even hesitating. “I can’t- There’s nothing special about me. I know how to put people at ease, that’s all. And anyway, I can’t see how you could afford going around asking people anything, considering your line of work. It’s not technically legal, what you do.”

“This isn’t my face,” she said, still seemingly caught up in her surprised disbelief. She wasn’t being careful about what she was saying. “I can be anybody.”

She realized what she said a moment later, and her face went instantly expressionless. Dean recognized it as panic more than anything else, and he wasn’t surprised by how she hurried the walking pace afterwards, now traveling in silence. When they arrived at Dean’s building, she lifted him up and flew to his window. Dean’s shriek of dismay was cut off by her hand pressing firmly down over his mouth, and Jesus he was going to be having some interesting dreams tonight.

Once Angel had successfully gotten them both through Dean’s window she made to leave immediately. Dean had suspected as much and turned to go about his way, only to step on his injured leg and let out a hiss of pain. Angel paused at his window, and looked back at him. She sighed and came back, pushing Dean’s hands away from his ankle and firmly gripping it in her own.

“Let me?” she asked gently. Dean didn’t know what she was asking for, but nodded. One agony inducing second later, she released his leg. “Just a pinch.”

That had been more than just a fucking pinch, but Dean didn’t even care because his ankle was fine. Not like it had quickly gotten better, but like it had never been injured at all.

“You could have done that earlier.”

“I didn’t want you to know what I could do,” she said. “Now that you know I can… change things, what was the use in hiding? I’d rather you weren’t injured. I could fix it, so I did.”

“And the wings?” Dean asked, astounded. Everyone knew Angel could fly. That was her one advantage, besides maybe incredible strength for her size. Everyone knew that and apparently that was on purpose, because what she could actually do was much more powerful.

“A distraction to make me seem different than what I was,” she said, wings growing out of two flaps she had in the hoody she was wearing. “I’ve grown quite fond of them though. They were difficult to learn to make.”

“Worth it,” Dean said, hesitating before reaching out to touch the feathers. She flinched away, and he put his hands down. “Sorry. I mean… and thank you for, y’know. Doing your thing.”

He gestured towards his ankle.

“Anytime,” she said solemnly, and although she played it as sarcastic, there was a startling genuineness underneath that took Dean by surprise. It was strange how easily Dean believed her. How easily Dean had decided to trust her. She looked toward the window. “I should…”

Dean leaned forward to kiss her before she finished. She froze in surprise, and Dean backed away, feeling his face start to heat up. It had been a stupid move, for so many reasons. Angel could be anybody he reminded himself. Anyone at all, and going around kissing random people was a dumb move and-

But then she dragged him to her and kissed him back, making all his worries melt away. Dean found himself on his back on his sofa, with Angel straddling his hips and looking down at him, a soft but guarded smile on her face. Again the achingly familiar nature of her expression hit Dean so hard, the rest of his mind stopped working for a moment. Before he could think to stop himself, Dean gasped in surprise:

“Cas?”

Because all at once so much made sense. Every piece fell together and Dean was astounded he hadn’t figured it out earlier because that damn smile was exactly the same. The one Dean had wished for years was more frequently pointed in his direction. The one that had frozen in place on Angel’s face, as her hands faltered from where her fingertips had been skating beneath his shirt.

She looked scared.

“Cas, is that you?” Dean tried again. Suspicion, accusation, and hope all muddied itself in his chest as he waited for some kind of response. Any kind of response except for frozen horror.

The flying leap Angel took out the window was more than enough for Dean to be convinced of the answer. He watched Cas fly into the night, and shut the window behind him, sinking to the floor and wondering what the fuck he was going to do now.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean spent his week interviewing the other candidates for mayor so he could write a story to fill in for the SucroCorp expose. Bobby had agreed to let them work on that piece as long as they needed, provided they still filled their columns each week. Cas had agreed to this arrangement and then quickly made himself scarce. He was good at that, and Dean had a feeling he wasn’t using entirely natural methods of making sure Dean could never catch a moment alone with him. At least the article Dean got out of his side investigation was decent coverage. Bela was spitting mad about it, since she was also handling the election, but even she had to admit that her article digging into where Adler’s funds were coming from fit well with Dean’s broad overview of each candidate’s positions and personalities.

The long shot candidate had been Dean’s favorite to interview. Jody Mills was a no-nonsense but kind woman, and had seemed surprised Dean had actually decided to interview her. Jody’s wife, Donna, had made it her mission in life to provide as many positive quotes for Dean to print as possible, and Dean had ended up using quite a few of them. His personal favorite was actually a quip of Jody’s, in which she’d said of Donna: “Behind every great woman is another great woman.”

The current mayor, Marvin Scribbler had been less fun. In fact he’d been downright annoying. Adler might be a fucking creep, but at least he didn’t drone on about inconsequential bullshit, all while throwing in the occasional obscure literary reference in an effort to catch Dean off guard. Scribbler was so desperate to seem smart and relevant, and it was all Dean could do to wonder how someone so fucking unlikable had been elected in the first place. And that was before Scribbler went on a little side rant about how he didn’t believe a woman should even be running for office. “Some may call it sexist… I call it the way things are. Who’s staying home with the children?”

Dean’s completely professional answer that Jody and Donna’s daughter Alex was a teenager, and capable of looking after herself while her two moms worked, was chuckled off. Scribbler had gone on to say he doubted this teenager was doing well without a male role model in her life, and that had been the last straw. Dean immediately brought the interview to an end left Mayor Scribbler sputtering angrily after him. That Dean didn’t turn around and call him any number of rude names is a miracle unto itself.

Dean felt like despite his personal feelings he represented everyone fairly in his article. At least as far as what they said they believed. Scribbler came off looking the worst, but Dean was pretty sure it would take a lot of doctoring and hedging to make him look like a good candidate, and why not just quote the jackass verbatim instead? The only issue was that it actually made Adler seem reasonable in comparison, because he wasn’t quite as overtly evil.

Hopefully Bela’s article questioning Adler’s funding would have a damaging effect on his campaign. Dean was hoping Adler’s positions would be enough to stop people voting for him, but with a candidate like Scribbler to defeat… It wasn’t impossible that Roman might succeed in placing a bribed and buttered up mayor just where they wanted him.

Election day was getting close, too, and Dean was barely any closer to definitively linking Adler to SucroCorp. If Cas would bother talking to him, he might be making more progress. Then again, if Cas bothered talking to him, Dean was pretty sure he would not be asking about the investigation. He would be asking why Cas didn’t think it was relevant information that he was a fucking superhero.

It took Dean getting an invite to a final fundraising dinner that Adler was hosting (and information from Charlie that Dick Roman was going to be in attendance) to make him bite the bullet. He psyched himself up as best as he could and invited over Sam, Charlie, and Robin. The story went over about as well as expected.

“Wait, Angel is Cas?” Charlie demanded. “But, uh, he… he doesn’t, uh- Not that you should assume people’s genders, but-“

Charlie shook her head.

“I’m just going to quit while I’m ahead,” she said. “So you figured out Cas was Angel, and he just bolted? Without another word?”

Dean may have left out the part where he kissed Cas, and Cas kissed back. In his defense, he didn’t want the thirty minute interrogation from Sam about whether or not he had been thinking through his actions. The answer was no, he had not been thinking through his actions. He had just gone for it, but it was important to note that Dean had thought that he was kissing someone that was not the guy who had very thoroughly rejected him. He knew how to take no for an answer.

“Well… he said something, before I figured it out,” said Dean, hoping no one would call him on his face slowly turning red. “He was convinced I had superpowers. I mean… me. It was stupid. He basically accused me of being a human roofie.”

Sam and Robin exchanged glances. Charlie avoided Dean’s eyes.

“Ridiculous, right?” Dean said. He’d mostly brought that up because he figured it would distract from the fact he was so obviously compromised when it came to the Cas situation. It wasn’t supposed to spur anything genuine.

“Well,” said Robin carefully. “I may have brought up a similar theory to Sam, once or twice.”

Dean stared at her.

“You what?”

Charlie broke in quickly. She had a second sense when it came to Dean being about to throw a bitch fit. She had a pretty good success right at preempting them too. It was both endearing and extremely annoying.

“It’s subtle,” said Charlie. “We weren’t sure exactly, but it’s like… being around you makes the endorphins go wacky. It’s like a warm hugs kind of superpower. And we can’t exactly prove it cuz y’know, you’re good at people stuff. It’s hard to separate out what’s you and what’s… extra. If there even is anything extra.”

“So you’re saying that I am a human roofie,” Dean said, suddenly feeling very sick to his stomach. “Jesus Christ that’s… that’s the kind of thing you tell a person so they can try and stop.”

Dean looked up at Robin in sudden horror.

“We dated,” he said in an almost whisper. “Oh god, I’m so sorry if I-“

“No, that’s not what we’re saying,” said Robin quickly, her own face morphing into surprise and vague disgust at the idea. “It’s not a sex thing, Dean. It’s more of a happy thing. Like an adrenaline rush, or a kick of caffeine. You barely even notice it. None of us even thought about it until recently. Sam and I were just chatting one day, and we figured out people just relax a little when you’re in the room. You just sort of emanate… calmness.”

“And again, we don’t know if that’s a superpower,” said Charlie. “You’re kind of a natural empath. You know what people want to hear. That’s just good journalistic instincts. Nothing super about it.”

“That’s not what Cas said,” said Dean. “He said that I make people like me.”

“Yeah, well, Cas was wrong,” said Sam. Robin seemed to be remembering something and she snapped her fingers.

“Remember during fall in seventh grade,” she said. “When my dad died. I couldn’t fucking stand you. I picked fights with you all the time, and when we weren’t fighting I wouldn’t even talk to you.”

“Uh yeah,” said Dean. It had been some of the worst few weeks of his life. He had tried so hard to be there for Robin, and she had just shut him out. He hadn’t had any friends as close as she was, and Dean had gone through his own spiral as Robin put herself back together.

“I couldn’t stand to be around you because you kept making me laugh,” said Robin. “And feel like the world wasn’t ending, and it made me so mad. I wanted to sob my eyes out all the time except for when we hung out. It made me hate you for a while.”

“Jesus, thanks,” muttered Dean. “Was there a point to bringing that up?”

“Yeah,” said Robin. “Cas said he lost a source.”

Oh.

“And chances are it was more personal than he’s letting on,” continued Robin. “So he runs away from the city where his friend just died and walks into a new office and gets ‘beginning of spring’ vibes off of you. I mean, I’d snap if I were him too. Especially, if I was actually into your weird body.”

“Robin, could you not?”

“What I’m saying is, Cas reacted. And since you waited all of fifteen minutes to ask him out, I’m going to guess he made assumptions about what exactly you were giving him warm fuzzies for,” said Robin. “No wonder he was rude. You’re lucky he didn’t punch you in the face.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Dean said. It was only now he realized just how bad this all must look from Cas’ perspective. No wonder he’d reacted to Dean the way he had. That didn’t explain why he’d kissed him back though. “I need to take a walk. Robin, if you could… I don’t know. Call Cas and tell him about the invite at least? We still need to take down Adler and Roman, and that’s our best shot at getting potential dirt.”

“Will do,” said Robin. She sized Dean up a moment. “We dated because my mom told me I was never going to be happy if I didn’t start putting effort into my love life. Our relationship was how I figured out I wasn’t built for domestic shit or really romance in general. Whatever your deal is has nothing to do with it, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me that again, and see if I don’t burn your model Batmobile,” Robin threatened. Dean barely acknowledged that threat as he swung out his window and climbed down the fire escape. A little time to clear his thoughts was just what he needed. He wound through the familiar streets of his hometown, ducking behind buildings and enjoying occasional glimpses of moonlight. It was calming, and Dean could feel his heart rate beginning to slow.

When his phone rang, Dean expected it to be Sam or Robin checking in on him. His eyebrows practically jumped to his forehead when he saw the contact name lit up on his phone was Bela Talbot.

“There’s someone in my house,” she said quietly into the phone before Dean could say anything. “Please tell me you have Multiman or the Witch or somebody on speed dial.”

“The police…”

“Already on their way,” said Bela flatly. “They killed my cat. I heard them.”

Oh god.

“Same address?”

“Obviously.”

“I’m sending someone, okay?” Dean promised. “Just… just sit tight.”

“I am. In a closet,” said Bela, just as quietly. “I’m sure you can relate.”

Bela was always at her bitchiest when she was scared. She’d nearly bitten Bobby’s head off when he reprimanded her for using Oxford commas once. That was the week her asylum appeal for staying in the states had almost been overturned. Dean didn’t know what exactly had happened in England that Bela needed asylum, but he knew better than to fucking ask.

“You’re going to be okay. I promise,” said Dean. He hung up and took a deep breath before ringing for Cas. It went straight to voicemail, just like all the other ones. “Cas, fucking answer your phone. I know you’re not my biggest fan, but this is more important than our bullshit. Bela’s in trouble. I’m a few miles out from where she is, but there are people in her house. Don’t let her get hurt because of me.”

Dean hung up again and texted Charlie and Sam. But they were at Dean’s apartment, and Dean lived on the other side of town that Bela did. There was no way any of them were going to get there in time.

“Where does she live?”

Dean spun around. Cas seemed to melt out of the shadows almost. It was eery. He looked like Angel, wings and dumb costume and boobs and all. Despite how un-Cas he looked, Dean was still kicking himself that he hadn’t noticed who it was behind the costume before. His mannerisms were just the same in this body as they were in his own.

Dean repeated Bela’s address open mouthed and Cas nodded. It occurred to Dean that Cas had probably been following him around. Again. God, there was something a little bit screwy about their dynamic.

Before Cas could take off, Dean grabbed his wrist.

“I thought you wanted me to help her.”

“She’s my friend too,” said Dean fiercely. “Like I said, I don’t give a fuck about our bullshit. I want to make sure Bela’s safe.”

Cas stared at him for a moment before nodding. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Dean’s waist and waited until Dean did the same.

“You’re never telling anyone about this,” Dean warned.

“Don’t let go,” Cas warned, sparing only a moment to roll his eyes before launching himself into the air.

What followed was the most nausea inducing experience of Dean Winchester’s life.

He actually did lean over and puke when Cas landed at Bela’s home. When he looked up it was to see the door was knocked open, and an unfamiliar van was parked out front. Two men dressed in black were dragging an unconscious and bloodied Bela towards the door. A third man was limping behind them, clutching an obviously broken arm. Looks like she’d put up one hell of a fight and Dean had never liked Bela more than he did at this moment.

“If anyone gets by me,” said Cas. “Make sure they don’t get away.”

Cas was a little terrifying, actually.

He stalked toward the two men holding Bela, and his wings grew smaller and scalier, the edges of them sharpening. Before henchman number one knew what hit him, Cas had hit him with an uppercut and then slashed a wing into his upper arm. It cut deep, causing henchman number one to let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Cas had already moved onto henchman two, prying his hand off of Bela’s shoulder and catching her one armed while pummeling henchman two with his wings. Bela started blinking and struggling, and Cas gamely pushed her behind him. The second she saw Dean, she ran for him while Cas remained in the living room, facing off three against one. Admittedly two of the men were severely injured, but it was still pretty bad ass.

“Saved by an angel,” said Bela, laughing a little hysterically. “My first nanny would have loved this. She was very Catholic.”

“First nanny?”

“She figured out things my father didn’t want her to know,” said Bela. “He had her deported to keep his secrets. I think she was the first person that ever cared about me. Sometimes I worry she was the last person who ever cared about me.”

“Bela,” Dean said carefully. “You are in a lot of pain. Don’t share anything you’ll regret saying.”

Bela aimed a sharp smile at him.

“On occasion, you are a very good man, Dean,” she said. “On occasion.”

“Just what I’m talking about. In a few hours, you’ll deny those words ever came out of your mouth,” Dean joked. He looked back towards the house just in time to hear two shots go off. His blood ran cold. “Bela we need to move. Now.”

He put in arm around her waist and half dragged, half walked her to the nearest side street. They moved as fast as possible and until Dean found a suitable hiding place in a playground tunnel. He ducked into it dragging Bela behind him, then turned to her and lifted a finger to his lips, hoping she could keep her head enough to keep quiet. She nodded at him, her face pale and eyes wide.

Half an hour passed before they heard voices talking.

“Fucking bitches,” muttered a voice to match a pair of feet that appeared on the outside of the tunnel. “That winged freak nearly cut off my arm! And I’m pretty sure Roy will never walk again. If he wakes up.”

So that meant Cas had permanently taken out one of the henchmen before the shots had gone off. And after that-

“‘That winged freak’ is lying in a pool of her own blood,” said another voice. “It’s bad manners to speak ill of the dead.”

Dean felt his heart fucking stop. When he’d heard the shots he’d known there was a chance, but it was so much worse to hear it confirmed.

“Fuck off, Kubrick,” said the first. “You’re the one who shot her. Pretty sure that’s worse. Last I checked, the boss wanted Angel alive. We were s’posed to get the reporter.”

Dean could feel Bela tense beside him. He wished he could say something, but he couldn’t risk her being found, especially when she was already injured. He reached out to take her hand and squeeze it gently. She squeezed back and Dean let go. Her expression looked a little calmer for the reassurance, and Dean supposed it was better if at least one of them wasn’t having a fucking panic attack.

“You’re sure they went this way?” asked the voice that belonged to Kubrick. Dean had no idea how either of them could possibly know, considering he and Bela had gotten out of sight before they’d made it out of house.

“I’m sure,” said the other man. “I can smell her perfume. She’s around here somewhere.”

It just fucking figured that one of the damn henchman would have a power, didn’t it?

Dean turned to look at Bela.

“Run,” he said to her. “Get back to your house and get in your car, and drive until it’s morning and you can get somewhere safe.”

Bela nodded. She seemed to know what Dean was going to do, but she didn’t try to stop him. That was fair. It would only get the both of them dead. Dean pointed to one end of the tunnel they were hiding in, the end that was further from the voices and nodded at Bela.

“Three, two, one,” he whispered and then crawled as quickly as he could out of one side and launched himself at the first person he saw. They hit the ground hard and their face made a crunching sound as he punched them, four times in a row. Dean paused to look at his handiwork and got back to his feet as soon as he saw that the man was out cold. He turned only to find himself with the wrong end of a gun pressed to his chest.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you aren’t happy to see me.”

“This is going to hurt,” said the man. Dean was pretty sure this was the one the other had called Kubrick. Then he was pretty sure that he was going to die, because suddenly he was on the ground and he couldn’t fucking breathe. He heard his own wet gasps as though he were listening to someone else fucking dying. All he could see were stars.

“Dean!”

Oh god, Sam was here. Of course he was. He would’ve felt that Charlie was going the wrong way and picked a street on intuition. The Eye just got to the scene of the crime a little too late this time.

Charlie duplicated, triplicated, and so-on-icated herself until Kubrick was surrounded by an army of Multi-Men. She took him down so fast, it was almost funny. If Dean had just managed to get him and Bela to hiding spot that would have bought them a few more minutes…

Dean screamed when Sam started putting pressure on his chest. He kept frantically telling Dean they needed to get him to a hospital, and that he would be fine, but Dean wasn’t fucking stupid. His lungs were filling up with some sort of fluid, probably blood, and he was drowning. He didn’t have time left.

“Move,” slurred a very familiar voice. Dean hadn’t heard the sound of a car approaching, but now he recognized the low thrum of an engine and the soft sounds of the radio coming out of a car door. “Move, I can help him.”

Sam must have been pushed away, because he made an offended sound that was followed by a thud. Dean blinked, surprised to see the stars above him had been replaced by Cas’s brown eyes. He was still Angel right now, and part of his head had been blown off and was slowly reconstructing itself. Dean stared at the sight in horrified fascination.

“I thought you were dead,” Dean choked out through lungs that were starting to function normally again. It hurt like a motherfucker, but at least the dizziness was starting to go away.

“I’m hard to kill,” said Cas, still slurring. Dean wondered if the part of his brain that had been blown out had something to do with speech. “Bela found me healing myself and brought me here.”

Dean supposed he owed Bela a thank you for that. He was almost very much not alive.

“You should have told me you’d still be kicking after a shot to the head,” said Dean. As the pain began to recede he realized that one of Cas’ hands was pressed onto his chest and the other was firmly holding Dean’s. “I got worried about you.”

“That’s nice,” said Cas. His skull had close up now, and skin was beginning to sprout across it. Cas wasn’t slurring anymore, but his eyelids were drooping heavily. “You’re nice.”

A few chunks of hair sprouted up before Cas collapsed on top of Dean, completely unconscious. Dean looked up to see Charlie and Sam staring at him.

“Oh yeah, Cas can like… well, yeah,” said Dean, realizing he’d left out the part about his ankle getting fixed the night he figured out who exactly Angel was.

“She saved you,” said Sam. “I mean, he saved you. I mean- I don’t know what I mean.”

“Is he okay?” asked Charlie. One of he doppelgängers stooped down to lift Cas off of Dean’s chest. He was entirely limp, but he was breathing. Dean sat up and reached out to help Charlie lift Cas to his feet. Charlie collapsed the different versions of herself back into one person.

“I don’t know,” said Dean. “He got shot in the head. Maybe he didn’t put everything back together correctly.”

“Or maybe he’s just tired,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “If I try to maintain to many multiples at the same time, I can pass out. It happened a lot more when I was younger, remember? When I was trying to figure out my limits?”

Dean did remember this. And he remembered something else, too. And that was the fact that Charlie was always fucking hungry the moment she woke up. As if she hadn’t eaten in weeks hungry.

“We can’t bring him to a hospital while he looks like this,” said Dean. Technically, superhero work was not legal. The police didn’t work all that hard to bring people in, but bringing angel into a hospital would practically force their hand. Otherwise it would look like they were ignoring the laws. “We’ll bring him back to my apartment. Sam, get him food and meet us back there.”

Dean was glad that Cas had opted for a smaller version of his wings to fight with. Otherwise there was no way he was going to have fit in the car. Dean lay Cas down across the back seat and grabbed the keys from Sam. Charlie took shotgun, and Sam went over to ask Bela for a ride while she stared at him dumbfounded.

“You’re the Eye,” Dean heard her say.

“Uh, yeah,” said Sam.

“And Sam Winchester,” she said. Of course Bela had figured it out. She wasn’t stupid, and she’d heard Sam’s voice before. Charlie went with a voice modifier along with her costume, but Sam had always insisted against one, despite Dean’s warning that that was fucking stupid.

“I’d like it if you didn’t tell people that second part,” said Sam.

“Right,” said Bela. “On the condition no one else gets a decent shot at murdering me tonight, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Oh boy, was it going to be a problem, but Dean wasn’t thinking about that right now. Right now he was focused on making sure Cas was going to wake up. Sam could handle himself for a little while.

“Drive,” Charlie said. Dean looked around to see that people were looking out of their windows at them. Some of them had their phones out, probably taking pictures of what had happened. “The cops will get here soon, and they’ll pick up generic bad guys one and two.”

Dean drove. By the time they got back to his apartment, Cas hadn’t woken up once.


	6. Chapter 6

”Please stop pacing back and forth,” said Charlie, interrupting Dean who had been busy worrying obsessively. “You’re going to give me anxiety.”

“I’m going to give you a concussion,” Dean said. Charlie raised an eyebrow, and if Dean had been in a better mood, he might have had a go at getting his ass kicked. Sam was hard to beat in a fight, Charlie was impossible. They’d all known each other so long, that Charlie was included in the squabbling over pointless crap, and the infighting tended to lead to playfighting, which sometimes led to three Charlies pinning Dean and Sam to the ground while a fourth gleefully took control of the remote. Dean had seen way more Power Puff girls than was physically healthy because of Charlie’s unfair advantage at remote wars. “Fuck off, okay?”

Charlie sighed and duplicated herself. The double poked at Cas’ wings while Charlie lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Could you stop that?” Dean asked. “Dude’s unconscious, have some respect.”

“Sorry,” said Charlie, sitting up as her double rejoined her body. “So… you like him, huh?”

Dean gave her a look.

“I mean, I knew you liked him at first,” said Charlie. “But that was before he was total jerkwad to you. And that was before you figured out he was lying to you.”

“Your point?”

“You have worse taste in men than Pamela,” said Charlie, raising her hands in surrender. “Just saying.”

“Who’s lusting after a super villain again?”

“She’s hot. I’m gay. Here there be lust,” said Charlie. “I don’t want to marry her and have her super villain babies.”

“That’s not how that works, Charlie.”

“What I’m saying is, you can like someone’s face and admit that they haven’t been so nice to you,” said Charlie. “And you haven’t been so nice to him either, from what Robin tells me, so…”

Dean was saved from having to continue the conversation by Sam bursting in the door. He had a bag of hamburgers in one hand and car keys in the other. At second glance, Dean saw that Bela was standing right behind him, though now bandaged up. Just the way Dad had taught them, Dean thought. He caught Sam’s eyes and saw his brother shrug.

“We figured she’d be safer if she stuck close to me,” said Sam, setting down the burgers on the living room table. “Killer instinct is great for avoiding… killers?”

“I’ve told you so many times, you can’t pun,” muttered Charlie from where she was lying on the floor. “Hey Dean, what kind of criminal gets the most ass?”

“Assassins.”

“Bingo. Thanks for playing Sam, you win no glory.”

Dean smirked in Sam’s direction at Charlie’s teasing, but he was just frowning at the sofa.

“I think Ca-,” Sam said, stopping himself with a quick glance at Bela. “I think Angel woke up.”

Dean started, and had barely looked in Cas’ direction before he saw him lunge for the bag of burgers on the table. He demolished the first one in under ten seconds, hardly bothering to chew before he swallowed. He slowed down slightly after that, but all six burgers were gone in a matter of minutes. Everyone else stared at him incredulously as he looked up to see them all watching him eat.

“You were right about hungry,” Charlie said, nudging Dean. “Pretty sure some of those were supposed to be for us, Angel.”

Cas looked down at the burger bag and then up again.

“My apologies,” he said, quickly followed by: “Are there any more?”

“Alright, Ronald McDonald, chill out,” said Dean. “I can dig some crap out of the freezer. I think the six burgers you just ate will hold you over for a while.”

Dean went to do that, and wasn’t surprised that Sam came up to talk to him while Bela shut the door behind her. She looked calm, mostly, but her hands were clenched into fists. Bela liked feeling safe, Dean knew. She’d made it abundantly clear over the years that she knew twice as much as you did about all the shitty things you’d ever done and she wouldn’t hesitate to exploit that if it meant saving her own reputation. It made her an excellent reporter, and a terrible friend. He was on better terms with her than he usually was with Cas, but that wasn’t saying much considering.

“I’m going to head out with Bela,” said Sam. “We’ll keep moving, and I’ll keep an eye on her until we know exactly what’s going on.”

“The Eye keeping an eye on someone. Maybe you can pun,” Dean joked, though he didn’t really feel like laughing. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine. Not like I haven’t dealt with my fair share of henchman.”

“Not talking about henchmen. I like Bela, but she’s been through shit and she will take care of herself. You make sure taking care of herself doesn’t involve throwing you under the bus, you hear me?” said Dean. Sam nodded. “And don’t hit on her.”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Sam, rolling his eyes. “I’m heading out. You take care of you know who. And while we’re giving out free advice… I have a good feeling about him.”

He whispered the last part, in case Bela was listening in. Dean wasn’t sure why his brother thought it was necessary to share this right now, but it sure didn’t seem worth the risk of Bela having something else to hold over them just to tell Dean that Cas was a decent guy.

“Uh huh,” said Dean.

“Like a feeling, feeling,” Sam said, to clarify. Ah, so this was some of Sam’s psychic mumbo jumbo. Great, that was never annoyingly vague. “Stick with him, okay? It’s my professional opinion.”

“He doesn’t like me very much.”

“People change their minds,” said Sam. He left Dean to think that over, taking Bela along with him. That at least was good news, because it meant that Dean didn’t have to hedge his words while he had a great big fucking talk with Cas. They were long overdue, but he wasn’t sure he had any idea how to approach that conversation yet.

Food, he could do, at least. He microwaved five or six frozen dinners and set them up in front of Cas who immediately started eating. The color started coming back to his face as he did so, and slowly Cas started retracting his wings and changing his body back to normal. Or well… almost normal. He was shorter and thinner than he usually was so his clothes still fit, though they were still obviously made for someone with a very different figure.

“Jesus that’s creepy,” Dean said, earning himself a glare from Cas. “Sorry. So, uh, yeah. It really is you. One hundred percent.”

“I’d rather not do this.”

“You’d rather not have a conversation with me? Yeah, you’re really fucking talented at that,” said Dean. “You go out of your way to save my life a few times, but string a few words together, that’s hard for you, huh?”

Cas’ eating slowed to a standstill. He sighed deeply, and set down his fork before looking Dean straight in the eye.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

“Which one… are you a dude or a chick?” Dean asked. Cas scoffed at him, and Dean realized he had immediately screwed up. “Fuck, Charlie, translate for me?”

“Pronouns.”

“Yeah that,” said Dean, snapping his fingers as he remembered that particular conversation Charlie had had with both him and Sam. Not that Dean was oblivious about that kind of stuff, he just wasn’t as up to date as maybe the modern bi guy should be. “If it’s not… I’m not trying to fuck with you okay? I just want to be on the same page.”

Cas considered this for a moment before nodding. It was a small gesture, but it was enough that Dean knew Cas understood that this was a conversation that needed to be had with an assumption of good faith.

“He/him is preferred,” Cas said. “They/them is… not inaccurate.”

Castiel picked up his food and resumed eating as he spoke.

“When I was younger it was immediately clear to me that I was different than Jimmy was,” said Cas. “He seemed to know a thousand unspoken rules I didn’t. How to dress, how to talk to people, how to make friends. It frustrated me how often people would come up to me and expect me to be like him, and the disappointment on their face when I failed to live up to him in any capacity. I started wanting to be someone else, and to my surprise I discovered that when I put my mind to it, I could be. I made myself taller, changed the structure of my face, and I kept adjusting and adjusting until my parents noticed and explained to me what I was doing.”

“And they told you to keep it quiet,” said Charlie.

“Of course they did,” said Cas. “They aren’t stupid. Abilities like ours tend to attract the wrong kind of attention.”

Dean had had to have that talk with Sam, and then Charlie pretty soon after. Mary and John Winchester had had that talk with Sam first, but he’d been a stubborn, dumb little twelve year old who wanted to tell every one he ever met that he was psychic, and it took Dean laying out the cold, hard truth about just how bad that could be to get through to him. Charlie had been smarter about it. As soon as Dean promised to make sure he found a safe place for Sam and Charlie to work on their powers, she’d been all smiles. If you suspected someone had abilities, you didn’t talk about it. It just wasn’t polite. That was one reason Dean never officially told Robin that Sam was the Eye and Charlie was Multiman. It just wasn’t done.

“How quiet did you keep it?” Dean asked.

“I stopped changing myself,” said Cas. “For a long time I pretended that I couldn’t. That I had imagined it all. I grew into all the things that made me different, and I grew a healthy appetite for recognition as I realized I had a talent for writing. One thing led to another, and I thought I’d put my abilities behind me. That is, until I met someone who forced me to reconcile my adult life with my childhood.”

Cas paused, his teeth grinding together a moment. He had to force the next words out.

“Her name was Hannah,” he said. “And she always knew things she shouldn’t. She was majoring in journalism with me, and she always seemed to be able to get the best sources. I could never figure out how until I saw her… She could fit herself into other people, and wear their bodies. We became friends after I learned her secret, and it wasn’t long before I showed her what I could do. We felt like two sides of the same coin, and she quickly convinced me that I was given my abilities for a reason. I was so desperate to be told that I was important, and making the world a better place seemed as good a reason as any to think oneself special. It’s not a coincidence people with abilities tend to get caught up in hero work.”

“And that’s when you decided to take down SucroCorp?” Dean asked. Cas nodded, his eyes unfocused and unseeing.

“Eventually,” he said. “At first we built up our reputations so that the blow would strike. And even after that was done, well- The thing is, I always had… doubts. About Hannah’s methods of doing things. The way she would wear people was disconcerting to me, and I had trouble accepting the ethics behind using her abilities to expose people for their wrongdoings. She agonized over it even more than I did, but ultimately she felt like she was doing the right thing. And after years of close friendship, I decided to trust that she was right.”

Castiel looked at the file of papers that was still strewn across Dean’s kitchen table, and had been for a few weeks now. It was even more marked up than before, but Cas had hardly touched them since he’d dropped them off. Almost like he was afraid to touch them.

When Dean looked back over at Cas it was with the terrifying shock of seeing his own face staring back at him.

“Jesus fuck, don’t do that,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief when Cas’ face melted back into his own. “Why the fuck would you-?”

“I can be anyone, and so could she. We felt rather invincible,” said Cas. “But one day she picked the wrong body to jump into, and somehow… I don’t know exactly what happened. Only that she was trapped inside a man who worked at SucroCorp and they knew about the two of us. They wanted to figure out who I was, and who Hannah really was. Hannah managed to escape long enough to call me and tell me that much. And then I heard a loud cracking sound and another voice on the phone. He told me that Hannah was dead, and he was going to find me. He knew what I could do, and if I didn’t play my cards right, I would also find myself very dead.”

Cas had stopped eating at this point. He looked a little sick to his stomach

“I destroyed my cell phone and then gave two weeks notice at work. I kept expecting to be kidnapped, or killed, or something equally awful while I waited those two weeks, but it never happened. They knew what I was, but not who, so I managed to escape their notice. The only thing I could think to do after that was move back home, and try to keep off of their radar. But when they found out about Angel… They knew what Hannah looked like. They’d caught glimpses of her on security footage. Not high quality enough to figure out who she was, but enough that seeing a superhero that looks eerily like her would raise concern.”

“Oh,” said Dean. “And that with the dates of when Angel got to Lawrence-“

“A coincidence that would not go uninvestigated,” Cas confirmed. “I should have picked a different face, but it didn’t feel right. She died in someone else’s body. But how do you prove that? How could I even begin trying to find justice for her? The least I could do was carry a piece of her with me. I owed it to her to remember her face, and this is the best way I knew. And I tried to stop… Dean, you have to understand that I didn’t trust you. Every time you wrote about Angel, I was frightened for my safety and my brother’s family’s safety.”

“Wait, that was the story you tried to get pulled?” Dean asked, putting two and two together. He still felt the angry sting of resentment, but it was soothed somewhat now that he knew that Cas hadn’t been insulting him or trying to fuck him over. He’d just been trying to protect himself. “The one with Robin’s photo?”

“I offered to write the article first, if you remember,” Cas said, looking away from him. “I thought I could fudge the facts enough to throw SucroCorp off the scent.”

“Why didn’t you just talk to me?” Dean demanded. Cas studiously avoided eye contact, and Dean could feel himself getting angrier and angrier. “Wow. You really figured it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“I thought you were manipulating people with a power I believed I was susceptible to,” said Cas. “You didn’t make sense to me, and that seemed like the easiest explanation. Giving you more information to print would have made it easier for SucroCorp to-“

“Is it really so hard to fucking believe that people might just like and respect me without me having to brainwash them?” Dean demanded.

“No,” said Cas forcefully. “You clearly are very good at getting people to like you. But I’m not. I don’t like people, and they usually don’t like me. I don’t make friends easily, let alone…”

Cas trailed off as he noticed Charlie eagerly listening in. His mouth snapped shut, and his expression closed off. It took Dean elbowing Charlie hard in the side for her to squeak out something about guarding the perimeter. She split into about five doppelgängers, and spread out across Dean’s apartment, letting Cas have at least a little bit of space to figure out what he wanted to say.

“The floor had just fallen out on my life, and I saw everything as a potential threat,” said Cas at last. “When we met, we fell into conversation so quickly. It felt simple, speaking with you.”

“Yeah I remember,” said Dean. Because for a second there, he’d been knocked off his fucking feet by Cas. When Cas walked into their office, Dean had taken all of five minutes to discover that Cas was smart, and biting in an understated kinda way, and totally Dean’s type. There’d been a reason Dean hadn’t waited longer than fifteen minutes to feel out the situation. Cas had felt like he might be the one from the get go, and that was why it was so fucking hurtful when he’d looked at Dean like he was no better than dirt.

“I was very committed to being miserable. I suppose it was easier for me to believe that you were forcing me to be… attracted to you, than to believe I was done paying my penance for what had happened to Hannah,” said Cas. “Our relationship was complicated towards the end, and-“

“You were fucked up over your dead girlfriend. Got it,” said Dean, and frowning as he watched Cas’ face scrunch up a little. “Oh. She- but you didn’t-“

“Like I said,” Cas murmured, no longer making eye contact. “I very rarely like people. Especially that way. It didn’t seem quite right, falling for someone while grieving a friend I couldn’t find a way to love the way she wanted.”

“That- that must have been rough,” said Dean softly. It took a little courage to say what he had to say next. “When you kissed me… did you want to?”

“I seem to remember that you kissed me,” said Cas. Which, great. The thing this conversation needed to do was dissolve into a fight about semantics.

“I kissed Angel,” said Dean. “I didn’t figure out that Angel was you until after you kissed me back. I’m just making sure that wasn’t some adrenaline and pheromone fueled mistake, because Sam and Robin think you’re right about me having some kind of superpower and I just-“

“Yes, I wanted to,” said Cas, cutting off Dean’s rambling. “I assumed you wouldn’t figure out who I really was. It seemed… harmless.”

“Harmless?”

“Angel’s not real. She’s… she’s like a stage persona. And if you weren’t doing anything on purpose, it meant I’d misjudged you. If you really were safe, well- I got curious,” said Cas. “I have tried to… to see if I was wrong. Over the years. You seemed rather determined to dislike me after a while.”

“Gee I wonder why,” said Dean. Cas grimaced.

“I know why,” he said. “And I am sorry. For some of it, at least.”

For some of it. Dean guessed that was fair. Not the best apology in the world, but it was something.

“Yeah. Me too,” said Dean. “So where does that leave us?”

“Allies, I would hope.”

“I’m bi actually,” Dean quipped, smiling a little as Cas rolled his eyes. “I guess we see how the SucroCorp shit goes and then when can play the gushy stuff by ear.”

“You’re still interested in me,” Cas said, frowning. Yikes. That was not the reaction Dean had been hoping for. “I mean… I would understand if you- And I’m not sure that I-“

“Cas.”

“I have found that when people say they want to start again, they don’t realize how profoundly complicated that is,” said Cas. “There won’t suddenly not be two years of us arguing and disliking each other.”

“I didn’t say start fresh. I said play it by ear,” said Dean. “I never stopped wanting you that way, alright? So sue me. Or say no. Just… I don’t know. Give me something to work with, here.”

“Dean, I…” said Cas. And this was it. Dean had marched himself down this road and now he was going to hear a deliberate answer at the end of a real conversation, and fuck he almost didn’t want to. But at least the wondering would be over, even if things didn’t go his way.

Of course, that would be when Robin arrived.

A very loud and angry knocking on the door interrupted whatever Cas was about to say. He frowned and looked around, his features shifting subtly and frighteningly quickly back to Angel. Wings sprouted from beneath the flaps in the back of his coat, and it was only Dean shaking his head which stopped him from stalking off towards the door to see who it was.

“Charlie, please tell me no one told Robin I got shot.”

“Dean Winchester if you don’t open this door, I will kill you myself!” shouted Robin, knocking somehow even louder than before.

“I didn’t do it,” Charlie squeaked out, putting her helmet back on and condensing back down to one person. Because super villains Charlie could handle. Robin was the one who was terrifying.

“Fuck,” Dean said, leaping up to open the door and having one second to see Robin before he was being aggressively hugged to death and then smacked on the head. “I was going to call you.”

“Were you?” Robin demanded. “Considering Bela was the one who ended up texting me, I don’t fucking think so. You asshat. I’m your partner, and if something happens, you call me! No exceptions.”

“Robin, something happens every other week.”

“Like King Crossroads counts. Everyone knows he’s in love with you. He’s added asking about your health to his fucking monologue whenever he captures the Eye and Multiman,” said Robin.

“I fucking knew it,” Dean muttered. “Sam is a rat bastard for telling me I was imagining things.”

Robin hit him on his head again. Which ouch and also not cool.

“If you died and the last thing I said to you was that you had bad taste in television-” Robin said.

“Then you’d still be wrong about Dr. Sexy,” said Dean. Robin rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, okay? I promise.”

“You’d better be,” Robin threatened. Then she turned to Cas, who was still very much Angel shaped. He looked surprised to be addressed. “And you,” she accused.

“Uh, yes?”

“I know you saved Dean’s life, and trust me I’m grateful. But let’s not pretend you aren’t the one who put us all in danger in the first place.”

“Robin,” Dean hissed, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“I’m sure you have your reasons, and for all I know they’re damn good ones, but if anyone from the Sun or Sam and Charlie end up dead, you had better watch yourself. Because I’m not forgiving, and you can ask anyone about that.”

“I understand,” said Cas. “I’m sure there is nothing you could do to me that I would not deserve.”

“Both of you shut up,” said Dean. Which was a dumb thing to say to Robin, but whatever. She could deal. “This isn’t about petty bullshit, alright? We can sort that out later. For right now, we have a company full of assholes that are trying to stick their noses where they don’t belong. Lawrence is at stake here. So I say we quit threatening and ignoring each other and we come up with a plan to save it. That alright with everyone?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Charlie took off her helmet and cleared her throat.

“I, uh… I might have a plan,” she said. “Dean you said you had an invite to Adler’s last fundraising party right? The one a week before the election? And Roman’s definitely going to be there.”

“Yeah,” said Dean. “I was figuring we try something.”

“I’ve got just the thing,” said Charlie. “But it’s going to take all of us. And it’s not going to be easy.”

Well, it never was, was it?


	7. Chapter 7

Dean tugged his tie a little looser and ignored Robin’s annoyed side glance. It wasn’t his fault that she had to deal with the discomfort of wearing a short form fitting dress while he could get away with making his upscale outfit look a little less put together. It’s not like he invented sexism. And besides, Dean knew from experience that Adler actually felt more comfortable as the best dressed person in the room. Ego, or something like that, Dean supposed.

And here Adler came, milling through the seventy or so people who had gathered in the lobby of the best hotel in town. Dean had quickly come to realize that about half of the people there were out of towners, and the other half were in general the small amount of well to do citizens Lawrence had. Not that Lawrence didn’t have it’s slice of the middle class, but the really nice part of town was small enough to walk through in the space of ten minutes, stopping to gawk included.

And not that being well off was a crime, because heaven forbid Dean even poke fun at some of Sam’s college friends for unthinkingly mentioning their two summer homes not being quite as nice as the real rich kids who went to Stanford, but well… Sometimes there could be a bit of an empathy gap when someone had never had to make difficult decisions when it came to money. And Adler was good at playing to that blind spot. He was a schmoozer, through and through, and it wasn’t a surprise he’d reacted to the greasy, ambitious to the point of blindness, slightly mean-spirited front that Dean had put on for their interview. Whether that was aided along by abilities or not, Dean wasn’t really sure, but it had worked.

Adler had taken such a shine to Dean that he appeared to be dragging Roman himself over to meet him. Let the record show that the CEO of SucroCorp looked impossibly bored. Dean supposed without innocent people to kill, the party just wasn’t his thing. When Dean reached forward to shake his hand, he had to work not to flinch back at how cold and clammy they felt. Like a dead fish.

Robin felt the same if her expression was anything to go by.

“So, you’re the man who writes about superheroes?” Roman said, a sharp interest in his eyes taking over the boredom. Dean glanced at Adler, who nodded at him.

“I have to write about something,” said Dean. “Only way I’ll ever make it to the big leagues.”

Dean smiled back at Robin and she stepped forward, close to Dean’s side.

“Robin and I’ve got big dreams,” said Dean, noting the lazy smirk on Adler’s face. He, at least, was convinced that this was just networking. Unfortunately, Dean couldn’t shake the feeling that Roman was more clever than Adler was.

“I’m sure you do,” Roman said. “I’m guessing Lawrence isn’t much to your liking then. An industrious young man like you, I’m surprised you haven’t left before now.”

Way to act like Robin was a fucking lamp, asshole, Dean noted to himself as Roman ignored her out of hand.

“Yeah well, it gets kind of hard to leave when your dad gets himself shot and your mom decides covering every conflict the other side of the Prime Meridian is easier than dealing with the fall out,” said Dean. He blinked. He hadn’t meant to say that. In fact that sounded an awful lot like an agitated version of the truth, something Dean was well versed in avoiding when talking to strangers. He tried to stop but the words just kept coming out. “I told my brother I didn’t get into NYU so he wouldn’t bug me about deciding to stay local.”

Dean can feel Robin staring at the side of his face, because this is so not going to plan. Dean is supposed to schmooze and plant a tracker Charlie made onto Roman’s jacket. Instead he’s running his mouth about his fucking trauma. Dean hadn’t really considered the idea that Roman might have abilities, mostly because he seemed determined to make it a crime to openly use them.

“I’m sure your lovely partner appreciated that,” Roman said, his eyes finally flicking over to Robin.

“She sure did,” Robin said, taking over the conversation while Dean recovered and attempted to come up with a strategy to not spill his guts every time Roman asked him a question. Hopefully whatever mojo the guy was working would stay focused on him. “Though honestly I’m not convinced Dean has the business sense to make it without me. And you know what they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words.”

Okay, that got a fond eye roll from Dean. Robin had used that joke more than once, always at Dean’s expense. It was good for a quick reset. So Dean couldn’t lie, that was fine. The truth could be bent in ways that it amounted to the same thing.

“I’m lucky Robin isn’t the competition,” said Dean, smiling blandly. “Otherwise I’d be out of a job. She’s the one who insisted we print that story that went viral about Angel. I wasn’t sure it was exactly newsworthy, but Robin insisted it would make waves.”

“Smart girl,” Roman said. “I did actually happen to see that particular story. Interesting reading.”

“You can make fun of me. I can take it,” Dean said, aiming for guileless with his smile. Roman seemed to be growing a little more frustrated the longer the conversation went on and Dean was keeping about two dozen things from flying out of his mouth. Some of them worse than others.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Roman. “Though I would love to discuss it further with you. As I’m sure you know, I have a rather negative opinion of vigilante justice. I’m interested in hearing your take.”

Luckily for Dean, Adler interrupted here, desperate to include himself back into the conversation.

“Oh, don’t force the boy into a corner,” said Adler. “He has to climb the ladder somehow, and if our plans go through we’ll be taking out a few rungs. With heroes firmly illegal, I can’t see them lining up to talk to the local rags.”

Dean took his chance and leaned forward to talk to Roman more quietly. He had to be careful how he worded what he wanted to say or it wouldn’t come out. So Dean thought on his feet and placed the tracker as he spoke, and Roman seemed none the wiser.

“If you can give me anything else to write about, or anywhere else to write it from, it’d be much appreciated,” said Dean, and he slowly saw the suspicion drain from Roman’s eyes.

“You’re forthright,” he said, smiling like he was the only one in on a joke. Adler shifted uncomfortably, obviously realizing that Roman had been sniffing Dean out. It wouldn’t surprise Dean in the slightest if Roman had used his abilities on Adler as well.

“You seem to have that effect on people,” Dean said back. Roman just smiled wider, and Dean resisted the urge to count and see if he had extra teeth, because Christ that was a shark’s smile if he ever saw one. “I guess it’s easier, when everyone else has to put all their cards on the table.”

“It is at that,” Roman said with a soft chuckle. “Pleasure speaking to you, Dean. See if you can’t stay on my good side and I can make things happen for you. All those big dreams of yours.”

Roman moving away from him gave Dean a sense of dizzying relief. Like when you can finally breathe normally again after having a cold. Robin was giving him an odd look and Dean mouthed ‘later’ at her. The next part of the plan was trickier.

“Tracker planted?” asked Charlie through the comm system she’d rigged up. Dean did his best not to react in any way and instead turned to Robin and made some inane comment about the weather. Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. “Great. Witch and Angel are a go. King Crossroads took the bait.”

Dean looked around carefully until he noticed exactly which spot his eyes kept skipping over and there was the other part of the plan. Apollo wasn’t invisible, technically, but she could make it so her face was impossible to remember and she couldn’t be picked out of a crowd. If you knew what she could do, it was possible to spot her. And if she was injured, her control over her abilities started to crack, which was how Dean had gotten a glimpse of someone he was pretty sure was Claire Novak.

Cas yelling about how Apollo should not be included in the plan had helped to confirm this pretty soundly. Dean wondered what Jimmy thought about his daughter being like his weird twin brother that he’d ignored and made fun of all through high school. Dean was a good eight years younger than Cas was, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t remember the way people used to talk about how sad it was the Novak twins didn’t get along. Dean supposed Jimmy had invited Cas back to live with him when things went south in New York, so maybe he’d gotten over himself as he grew up.

Apollo weaved through the crowd slipping laxatives into people’s drinks. She targeted indiscriminately, and her only instruction had been to make sure that she got one of Roman’s. By the time she was through, some of the first people were beginning to make their excuses and run for the nearest bathroom. All this meant it was easy for Dean to sneak out in the ensuing chaos without being noticed.

King Crossroads dogs were already circling the front exit of the hotel. They were animatronic beasts, and had a sophisticated enough AI to be fiercely loyal if not particularly smart. This was good. The police would put the hotel on lockdown until the area could be cleared, forcing everyone inside to stay until the villain match down they’d set up fizzled out. Getting King Crossroads and Hellgirl to feud had been as simple as Cas and Max foiling each villain’s most recent plans and then casually mentioning something inflammatory. If Dean remembered correctly, Cas had said something along the lines of “At least when Hellgirl has an evil plot, no one rolls their eyes afterwards” to King Crossroads, which had seemingly incensed him enough that he’d made multiple threatening public declarations in Hellgirl’s general direction and she had responded in kind. All Charlie had had to do was seemingly leak a plan to interfere with Adler’s fundraising dinner to each side and let King Crossroads and Hellgirl do their best to foil each other, all while playing into Charlie’s master plan.

All Dean had to do now was ensure Roman wouldn’t be able to leave even if he tried. Dean flirted shamelessly with a valet who was desperate to commiserate about the corporate jerks who had been treating him like crap. Five minutes in and Dean knew the make, model, and exact location of Roman’s car. Another ten minutes of gracefully extracting himself from the conversation and Dean was able to slash Roman’s tires and fuck up his engine bad enough that he wasn’t going anywhere while the lockdown was in place.

He slipped back into the party unnoticed, striking up a conversation about how awful supervillains were with someone or other until Robin found him. Considering a quarter of the attendants were currently in various bathrooms, he wasn’t as hard to find as he would have been half an hour ago.

“Flyboy and Max-a-Million are doing fine,” said Robin, which made Dean flinch. It wasn’t nearly coded enough language for his liking, but the look on Robin’s face meant she was daring him to question her about it. “It’s going to be a long night.”

Dean lightly touched the flash drive in his pocket. Charlie had written software onto it that would download the contents of a computer or phone when attached, and would also automatically download a mirroring system that would feed all activity to Charlie’s own computer. Through that they could gather enough information to feed through to Bela, who was under Sam’s protection and sitting on the story of her career. Dean had tried to insist that Cas deserved to break it, but Cas had given up the opportunity before Dean could argue very far. He said it was too risky, but Dean knew that wasn’t it. This was the story that had killed Cas’ best friend. Of course he didn’t want to touch it.

“So Robin, what do you think about going steady?” he asked, trying to play off his nerves with a smile. That was part of the plan too, the two of them running off together. No one would know better than to question it, and hopefully it would help them to better blend in.

“I think your boyfriend might have something to say about it,” Robin said back, though she slipped her arm through his and made an effort to look scared about the resounding booms coming from outside the hotel. The King and Hellgirl were really going at it. Dean hoped Cas and Max stayed safe as they did their best to control the fight.

“Harrison Ford and I aren’t exclusive,” said Dean.

“Nice deflection,” said Robin. “I had a talk with him, actually.”

“Harrison Ford?”

“No, Cas, you dumbass,” said Robin. “I told him not to take advantage of you.”

“I don’t think that’s an issue.”

“Trust me, it could be,” said Robin. Dean gave her a look. “The thing with you is… you like to make people happy.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Dean asked. “I mean, as long as you’re still pretty sure I’m not a human roofie.”

“You’re definitely not. And it’s not a bad thing,” said Robin. “But it can be. Especially if someone asks for more than they’re willing to give back. Charlie told me that Cas kissed you-“

“Jesus did she have to listen in-“

“-because he was curious,” Robin finished. “So I told him he had to do better than that. Considering I broke your heart that one time, I figured I was more than qualified. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“I got over it,” said Dean. It had taken a month or two of awkwardness, but he had. It wasn’t like it was news to him that he’d been more invested in that relationship than Robin had. The fact that she’d responded to him finally saying “I love you” with a breakup speech said more than words really could. “Look, I get that you’re doing this because you care, but I’m asking you to stay out of it. I can take care of myself as far as Cas is concerned.”

Robin stared him down for a few seconds before nodding.

“Good,” she said. “Alright, should we head out?”

They joined the line of people trying to get a room for the night. Adler was at the front, personally apologizing to the people in attendance about the food and the super villain fight raging outside. For the most part the guests seemed mollified, though Dean had a feeling they weren’t going to be donating nearly as much as they might have before they were all seriously inconvenienced.

Charlie had already figured out which room Roman had been assigned (one of the deluxe suites, go figure), and she’d advised Robin and Dean to try to get a room on the same floor so their presence wouldn’t be quite as suspicious. She was controlling all the security cameras, but she couldn’t account for witnesses.

Dean tried not to have a heart attack as he looked at the room price. Robin played it off better than he did, immediately attaching herself to Dean’s side in the part of clingy girlfriend and insisting they had to get a nice room. Dean forked over his credit card, and hoped Charlie would remember to transfer some cash his way so he wasn’t fucked over for the rent this month.

“Angel’s got your room number. He’ll meet you there,” Charlie said into their ear pieces. “Witch has a handle on minimizing the damage. Hellgirl’s taking out a bunch of the King’s dogs, and he is not happy about it.”

“That’s okay,” Dean said. “He has a backup of every AI so he can just make more bodies for them. He backed up Juliet twice just in case, because she’s his favorite.”

Robin side-eyed him.

“What?” Dean said defensively. “I pay attention to the monologues. It’s not like there’s anything else to do until Sam and Charlie get around to coming to my rescue.”

“Whatever,” she said. There was a knock on their window, and she walked over to let Cas in. She gave him a critical once over, then shrugged. “Congrats, I’ve decided I’m rooting for you now, since apparently the other option is an egomaniac with a thing for mechanical dogs.”

“Oh shut up, Robin,” said Dean, as Cas just frowned at her in confusion. “Are we doing this thing or not?”

“Decidedly yes,” Cas said, reaching for the flash drive Dean was holding out to him. Robin tossed him the maid’s outfit they’d stolen on the way up, and Cas’ face and body began to change incrementally until he was a short blonde woman with thin lips and grey eyes. He excused himself to the bathroom to change, and came back to grab the master key that would let him into Roman’s room.

“Alright, Charlie says she can get Roman out of his room for twenty minutes with the distraction she has planned,” Dean reminded Cas. “The program takes five minutes to load, so you need to be in and out as fast as safely possible.”

“I’m sure I can handle it,” said Cas, taking an earpiece from Robin and placing it carefully in his ear so it was no longer visible. “And if I can get in trouble-“

“Just say Lazarus,” said Dean. “Like the Bowie song.”

Cas rolled his eyes but nodded.

“You read that one,” he said. Dean paused a moment, not getting what Castiel had meant for a second. Then he realized Cas must be talking about that Ask Cas response he’d written those few weeks ago.

“I read all of them,” said Dean. “You’re annoyingly good at the whole writing thing. Kept making me question my disdain for you.”

Cas smiled a moment, privately, as though he was laughing internally.

“What?” Dean asked.

“It’s just… It was the same for me,” said Cas. “Why I… When I thought you were manipulating me I could convince myself I had no legitimate feelings for you. That it was chemical or magical or… But then I’d read something you had written, and I couldn’t be quite so sure of myself. Sometimes it seemed there was quite an intelligent, hardworking, complex man to be falling for.”

“Huh,” Dean said, not at all intelligently. He swallowed hard and tried to think of some way to respond to that. “So-“

“Look, I really hate to do this,” Robin said, jarring Dean back to normal from his minor loss of all ability to function. “You two are painfully charming when you’re all flustered, but we are in the middle of a life or death situation here, so maybe stow the touchy feelies for twenty more minutes? I promise I’ll find somewhere else to be and you guys can use the room to talk. Or not talk. Just finish the mission first.”

“Right,” said Cas. He resolutely tucked the flash drive into his pocket and looked to Dean one more time. Before Dean could move, Cas stood up on his toes and pressed a kiss to Dean’s cheek, his mid length blonde hair tickling against Dean’s neck as he stepped back. This whole different faces thing was going to be confusing Dean’s head for the rest of forever. Cas seemed to pick up on Dean’s hesitance and for a moment he flashed his eyes back to blue. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

And damn that sounded good. The only problem was that Cas didn’t come back.

At the ten minute mark, Dean started to worry. They’d tried to build in enough extra time that even though Cas couldn’t lolligag, he shouldn’t be pressing it to the wire. Dean could still hear him breathing through the earpiece, but for whatever reason he seemed to be stuck.

Dean breathed a sigh of relief when Cas muttered a quiet “I’m in,” two minutes later. Whatever had been keeping him must have been taken care of. That relief shattered when barely thirty seconds had passed and Cas’ breathing had grown so haggard and awful that it sounded like he was about to cough up a lung.

“Lazarus.”

That’s all Dean needed to hear to go flying out of the room. Robin ran behind him, and he didn’t even hesitate to try to get her to stop. He made it to Roman’s room, took out the extra master key they’d snagged and opened the door.

Cas was lying in the middle of the floor, pain carved into every feature. His face was a mottled mixture of his own and the blonde woman he’d made himself into. It was horrifyingly grotesque and Dean rushed in without thinking.

“Dean, no,” Cas gasped. “There’s some kind of poison-”

Except Dean didn’t seem to be feeling the effects of whatever was happening. Robin hesitantly stepped through the door, also experiencing no effects. They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Robin, you take Cas and get him to safety,” said Dean, snatching the flash drive for Cas’ limp hand. “He’s pretty small in this body, you should be able to carry most of his weight.”

“I knew I did crossfit for some reason,” Robin deadpanned. She helped Cas to his feet and then looked back at Dean who was already slamming the flash drive into the computer lying on the desk. “Get out fast.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Dean said. Robin hurried out, half dragging Cas behind her. They had more than enough time to make it back to the hotel room. Dean just had to hope he would make it too.

The seconds ticked down so slowly, Dean was pretty sure that time itself was standing still. Every few moments he’d look back at the door, and once or twice he’d made a dive for under the desk when he imagined he’d heard the doorknob turning. Finally, he heard a small bell sound, and he took the flash drive out of the computer and allowed himself one moment to fist pump in victory. It was just as he was turning to leave that he heard the doorknob actually jiggle, and Jesus fucking Christ he had been so close…

Dean immediately slipped the flash drive into the narrow gap between the desk and the wall. Charlie had put a tracker on it, which meant she would be able to find it while Roman would have a steep disadvantage in that he didn’t know it existed and probably wouldn’t think to search the crevices of the room.

Swiveling around to face the door, Dean tried to think of some reasonable alternate explanation for why he was there. The only thing he could think of was trying to pass it off as some desperate attempt for attention by offering certain services in exchange for others, and Dean’s stomach simply couldn’t handle that.

“Dean,” Roman said, not even bothering to sound surprised. “I wondered if you might have been involved in all this. If you would, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish here? You’ve minorly inconvenienced a few dozen people. This won’t change anything.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Dean. Roman looked at him with a mixture of disgust and pity. He turned to the goon that had been following him all night and waved his hand in Dean’s direction.

“Take care of him, why don’t you?”

Before Dean could even move, henchman number one had pulled out a taser. He fell to the ground to the sound of buzzing, and writhed in pain until unconsciousness took him.


	8. Chapter 8

When Dean woke up, he was immediately certain he was no longer in Lawrence’s one nice hotel. In fact he was pretty sure he’d been tied up in a creepy warehouse at the edge of town that the police had a convenient habit of ignoring. Dean would know, considering he’d been tied up in this exact location dozens of other times, mostly by King Crossroads.

“So you’re awake then,” said Roman. Dean looked to his left to see Roman was sitting in a chair of his own. He stood up and walked over to Dean, dragging the chair behind him. The sound was more shrill than nails on a chalkboard, and Dean flinched despite himself. “You are one of the interesting ones. It’s a rare man who can lie to me.”

Dean didn’t say a word.

“And no powers either,” said Roman, humming to himself thoughtfully. Dean frowned at him. “You don’t know? I suppose it is common for the siblings of those who exhibit abilities to develop abilities of their own. Or imagine them.”

“Look, let’s just assume I have no idea what you’re talking about and call it a day.”

“Your brother, Sam,” Roman said, and Dean could feel his blood run cold. “It’s not hard to put together. The mask barely hides his face. A few rounds through a facial recognition software and… well, I’m honestly surprised no one had put it together sooner.”

“If you so much as-“

“I don’t care about him,” said Roman, interrupting Dean’s threat before it could even get good. Ripping out lungs had been involved. “The only way he gets involved is if you don’t give me the answers I want. And I always get the answers I want.”

“Fuck off.”

“Sometimes, people resist,” Roman continued. “People with abilities, they tend to be the hardest to crack. A bit of natural immunity to my persuasion. It’s why I put into motion a program that tags DNA coding associated with abilities. Harmless to anyone without, of course. Every Biggerson burger, every SucroCorp organic farm fresh fruit and vegetable carries the tag. Activate the tagged cells and the results are similar to extreme poisoning. Not enough to kill, but enough to weaken so that interrogation becomes easier.”

Extreme poisoning. Damn it, that explained what had happened to Cas.

“We saw on the tapes that your friend walked into my room, which I had, of course, protected,” Roman continued slowly, watching Dean’s face carefully. “She’ll be damaged, so I wouldn’t count on a rescue from Lawrence’s guardian Angel.”

It took Dean a moment to realize what this meant. First of all, essentially everyone was tagged. SucroCorp controlled so much of the market that it was highly likely everyone had ingested something they’d had they’re hands on at some point along the food distribution line. That meant they had an easy way of picking out people with abilities, something no one else had yet figured out how to do. Dean was pretty sure it was illegal to actually try, considering the fact people had habits of reacting negatively once they knew. Everyone loved a superhero, but knowing your neighbor could burn down your vegetable garden with an errant thought tended to make people jumpy.

Second, he realized he very certainly could not have any abilities. Roman wouldn’t seem so confident in the tagging system he’d wrangled up if it wasn’t one hundred percent effective. A mixture of extreme relief and a strange pang of disappointment filled him momentarily before he forced himself to move on. He could examine that shit later.

Finally, it meant that anyone (barring a suicidal attempt by Robin) who tried to come rescue him would be easily put down by Roman’s security system. Dean could only hope that Charlie and the others weren’t wasting time trying to save him and had instead retrieved the flash drive from Roman’s hotel room. The best thing they could do now was reveal SucroCorp for what it was. Much as Dean wanted to live a good few more decades, he knew when something was worth risking his life for, and taking down SucroCorp sure seemed like that might be it.

“So are you ready to answer some of my questions?” Roman asked.

“Bite me.”

Roman chuckled, as though Dean were a preschooler trying out some of the less reputable four letter words. What followed was a game of cat and mouse in which Dean was decidedly the mouse. He had to fight tooth and nail against Roman’s poking and prodding at his mind to get information on Angel, and details slipped out sometimes even as he tried to keep them in. He’d found if he talked down enough tangents, it became easier to keep avoiding the actual answer of the questions Roman was asking, but he didn’t have much hope that he could hold out forever. Eventually he would get tired, or they would do something to distract him while Roman continued asking him questions. Dean couldn’t hold out forever, but he was going to hold out as long as he damn could.

It was just as Dean was worried that he might break that Roman sighed and leaned away from him, shaking his head. Dean waited nervously, certain that Roman hadn’t just given up his mission. Dean couldn’t have been any more right.

With a snap of Roman’s fingers, one of his henchwomen brought forward a small jar with a stopper put inside what looked to be a spout. She yanked it open and shoved the spout into Dean’s mouth. What followed was the strangest feeling of something unfolding itself within him. An intense internal pressure that made his eyes water and ended with him feeling disconnected from his body, as if he were a in the passenger seat, instead of driving.

“So Ghost,” Roman said, looking directly at Dean. “Why don’t you tell us what you see. Who was involved in Dean’s little recon mission and what exactly were they trying to do.”

And the realization that internally his mind wasn’t his own either sent Dean into a panic. He fought as hard as he could against whatever they’d done to him, but a cold, distant presence slowly worked it’s way through his memories. Relaying names as they came through Dean’s unwilling mouth.

“Max Banes. Claire Novak. Bela Talbot. Charlie Bradbury. Cassandra Robinson. Sam Winchester. Ca-“

Dean’s voice stopped. Roman waited a moment and then nodded to the person beside him. They aimed a device at Dean, and although he didn’t feel any pain, whatever was in control of his body screamed. It arched Dean’s back, and made his muscles spasm, and twisted and turned as though Roman had just lit his body on fire. Dean felt the ache in his wrists from struggling against the ropes tying him, but that was about it. Whatever was happening to that other thing, couldn’t touch him.

“Names,” Roman repeated again calmly.

More memories were drawn up, but they were different this time. Focused. Before it hadn’t felt personal, but now every memory Dean had of Cas was being closely examined, and moved past in a way that was startlingly tender. It was only then that Dean remembered, that Dean realized what exactly they had done to him.

‘Hannah?’ he asked internally, surprising her into stillness. ‘You’re still alive.’

Dean felt tears begin to fall down his cheeks, and externally he saw Roman looking towards the woman with the machine. She saw Roman give her the look and turned on the device. Once again, Hannah twisted and turned and was left sobbing by the pain.

‘Please don’t tell them,’ Dean begged her. ‘I know it hurts, but please don’t tell them.’

And to her credit, Hannah didn’t. At least not for the five minutes Roman spent torturing her before the cavalry arrived.

One moment, Dean was still mentally encouraging Hannah as best as he could, and the next moment the entire wall next to him had been blown to bits. Everyone ducked for cover, even Roman’s ever calm and oily facade a little shaken. As the dust settled, who would it be but King Crossroads and Hellgirl who walked through the rubble? So yeah, Dean was a little fucking surprised, too.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Roman demanded of the both of them. King Crossroad and Hellgirl looked at each other and shrugged. “I told you both your enterprises would not be affected by my actions.”

“Somehow, we didn’t believe you,” said Hellgirl. “And an arch nemesis of mine told me she’d go on a date with me if I helped, so… yeah.”

“No one kidnaps Dean Winchester except me,” was all King Crossroads had to say about it.

Behind them emerged Multiman, the Eye, Witch, and Angel. Roman sighed and nodded towards his henchman, who pointed her device in their direction. Dean tried to warn them all, but Hannah was too busy staring at Cas (who Dean remembered had decided to wear her face as his superhero persona) to yell out Dean’s warning. The machine was turned on, but to Dean’s surprise nothing happened to any of his friends (or the super villains).

“Shouldn’t have left the antidote to your stupid poison lying around your hotel room, bitches,” said Charlie, before gleefully multiplying herself and taking out the majority of Roman’s men with ninja like precision. Sam helped, and Max took to using his powers to pile debris so he could block the exits. Claire, who Dean hadn’t even realized was there until now, flitted through the crowd, injected people with sedatives so they fell the ground knocked out. Cas was the one who made an immediate bee line for Dean so he could untie him.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Dean joked. It took him a moment to realize that he shouldn’t have been able to speak. He tested and moved his wrist and realized that at some point during the pandemonium Hannah must have left his body. Where exactly she had gone, he had no clue, but he had a feeling he should tell Cas as soon as possible. Before Hannah did something rash.

“Well, perhaps you should stop getting into so much trouble,” Cas snarked back, having finished untying Dean. “We need to get out of here.”

“No wait, Cas,” Dean said. “Hannah’s alive.”

Cas’ face fell entirely blank.

“What?”

“They… they forced her to use her powers on me. She was pretty far gone from how much they’d hurt her, but she wouldn’t give up your name. We might still be able to-“

“Save me?” asked a very distinctive voice. Cas and Dean turned to see Roman looking at the both of them. But his expression was entirely wrong, too gentle for the shark Roman was. “You can’t. My body’s gone now. There’s nothing left of me.”

“Hannah-“ Cas said.

“They hurt me so many different ways, if I tried to be myself again, I would die,” said Hannah through Roman’s lips. “But I can be him. Roman could pay his way out of charges much worse than the ones your going to throw at him. But with me here… let’s just say you’re definitely getting a guilty verdict.”

With most of the bad guys subdued, everyone had gathered to ask why the hell Dean and Cas weren’t making a break for it as soon as they could. They listened with growing horror to Hannah’s plans.

“I could be that,” she said. “Someone who makes the guilty answer for their crimes. Makes them confess. A ghost. I could be a ghost that haunts people who do wrong.”

“It was never right,” Cas said, stepping towards her. And god, Dean thought, what a trip it must be to be staring down a carbon copy of your own face, a face you haven’t seen in years, and watching it tell you that you’re heading down the wrong path. “What we did, it was never right. We should never have made people give us the information that they did. I should never have let you-“

“What Roman’s doing is worse,” said Hannah. “Even worse than you realize. Besides, I… I don’t want to die, Cas.”

“You could-“

“No.”

Dean knew what Cas was about to say, and he thanked his lucky stars that Hannah had refused him. If he had lost Cas like that, with Hannah controlling his body and with his express permission, he might have been sick.

Hannah looked around at the assorted superheroes and smiled sadly to herself.

“You can’t stop me,” she told them. And then she ran out away from them towards the sound of police sirens, because of course the police would get there now. Cas tried to run after her but Dean held him back.

“Let her do it,” he said. “Roman got away with torturing and killing people, he practically admitted it to me. Let her turn him in.”

“She-“

“Cas, I’m sorry,” said Dean, making Cas look at him. “I’m so sorry about what happened to both of you, but you have to let her do this. If Roman doesn’t go down, everyone else with abilities will. SucroCorp poisoned the food we eat, they’re messing with the people who are in charge of shit. She’s the only one who can stop them.”

And that, at the very least made Cas stop.

“You guys all have to get out of here,” Dean said. “I’ll explain what happened to the cops. You guys make sure Bela’s got that article ready to print.”

“I’ll stay with him,” said Apollo when Cas looked like he was about to object. “No one’s going to see me. It’ll be fine.”

And so they dispersed, the heroes while Dean waited patiently for the police to approach them so he could give a heavily edited version of what had happened. It took hours of being interrogated before the police were satisfied, and Dean was surprised when Donna personally stopped by to offer him a ride home, which he accepted. He’d known Donna was involved in police work, and Jody had been too before deciding to move on to social work, but he hadn’t expected her to go so far out of her way to be kind to him.

When he got back to his apartment, it was mercifully empty. Dean wouldn’t be surprised if Charlie had filled the place with security cameras and that was why he wasn’t currently being guarded within an inch of his life, but whatever the reason he was glad. He fell asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow.


	9. Chapter 9

”We never got to talk.”

Dean looked up from his computer to see Cas standing next to him. He was pulling something of an all nighter to get something worth publishing down before Bobby had him eviscerated and then fired. It was almost done, even if it was a piece of crap. Dean just didn’t care at this point.

“We didn’t, did we?” said Dean with a wry smile. “Are you okay?”

“No,” said Cas, standing stiff and a little too far away from Dean to be on accident. “And you?”

“Yeah, I’m alright now,” he said. “Getting kidnapped. It’s, uh, it’s part of the job description.”

“You don’t have to pretend that it wasn’t different this time,” said Cas gently, his posture starting to relax very slowly as Dean turned to face him fully, leaving his computer screen behind. “It would be perfectly understandable if you were… shaken. What Hannah can do rarely leaves people without some level of anxiety.”

Yeah, Dean had made it a habit of not thinking too hard about the fact that Hannah could have just chosen to take over his skin instead of Roman’s. Pretended to be him. She would have had access to all his memories, and she could have made a convincing fake he was sure. He wondered if she was tempted, if only to have Cas the way she’d wanted. Even if Dean didn’t really have Cas that way anyway, he was closer than she had been. But Hannah hadn’t done that, and dwelling on it even for a second made Dean feel vaguely shitty for thinking she might be capable of it. He might not know her all that well, but she had been Cas’ best friend. He owed her a bit of respect.

“I’m fine,” Dean repeated. “Anything else?”

Cas paused a moment. He looked at Dean as though he were trying to untangle a particularly complicated knot, and wasn’t sure where to start.

“People are saying Jody might win the election,” said Cas. “A lot of people hadn’t even known she was running before you’d wrote about her campaign. And now with Zachariah caught up in a criminal investigation… Well, chances are good our next mayor is going to be a very good woman.”

“I’m glad.”

“Maybe give yourself a little credit. If you hadn’t had the impulse to interview her, we’d probably be dealing with Scribbler for the foreseeable future.”

“I just wrote down what she and Donna said,” said Dean. “I don’t need credit for that. I didn’t do anything all that heroic. They’re the ones who worked their butts off and put together a decent campaign.”

“You helped give a voice to someone who wants to make the world a better place,” said Cas. “Dean, why do you write about superheroes?”

A lot of answers come to Dean’s mind. There’s the funny answer, that Dean didn’t want to but Sam just liked seeing his alter ego in the papers and what are you gonna do (which isn’t true, but gets a laugh from Charlie every time). There’s the simple answer, which is that it was just easy. Sam and Charlie had been willing to be interviewed, and people had liked reading about the Eye and Multiman. It got him attention and a good job, and the possibility to move up the ladder after he’d undercut himself by not going to college somewhere he’d have a better shot at making it to the big leagues. And then there’s-

“I want to help people the way they do,” said Dean. “But regular people who fight people with abilities… they have a bad habit of getting hurt. I’m not stupid. I know what I can do to help, and it isn’t put on a mask and fight bad guys. Not everyone gets to do the fun part.”

“You don’t enjoy what you do?”

“I do. I love writing. It makes me feel closer to my mom. She only calls every few weeks, but all we talk about when she does is what stories we’re working on. I just wish…” Dean trailed off, not knowing. “I was so upset when I thought I might be messing with people accidentally. That I was making people want to be around me. And I was so worried about the fact that I didn’t know how to turn it off or on, or control it and then it turned out there wasn’t anything there and I felt so disappointed. Because maybe I could have used that to finally do something for the world, you know? Too bad it’s just me.”

“Just you?” Cas asked. “Dean, you never thought you had abilities before I said something. You haven’t lost anything. It was my mistake assuming that someone who is just talented and friendly had ulterior motives, and infecting you with the idea that you haven't earned your accomplishments. You are incredible for so many reasons. You don’t need powers.”

“Right,” said Dean, not a small amount of sarcasm in his voice. “I hear Bela’s interviewing out in DC. At least that’s what Sam says. They text now. It’s a whole thing.”

“You said you were comfortable with her getting the story,” said Cas, obviously not following the sudden shift in conversation. Dean laughed.

“Yeah. I am,” he said. “And that’s the thing isn’t it? I didn’t even think to fight for that story. I have all these… these dreams of getting out of Lawrence and writing about things that are big and important and mean something, but-“

Dean cut himself off, not sure how to continue.

“What if that’s not what you really want,” Cas finished for him. Dean nodded. Cas sat down in the chair at the desk next to him. For a while, neither of them said anything. “The small things can be just as important.”

“I know that, Cas.”

“I figured you did. I just thought maybe you could use a reminder,” said Cas with a small smile. “Besides, you’ve done more than your share of big things in the past week. A multibillion dollar company that poisoned the entirety of the United States a good percentage of the rest of the world is falling to pieces as we speak. That wouldn’t have happened without you.”

“Hannah did that.”

“I find it an odd combination that you can be so unbearably smug while seeming to think so little of your own importance,” Cas said. Dean made a face at him.

“Considering you’ve been trying to knock me down a peg for years, it’s a little weird that you’re defending me now,” said Dean. “Finally decided you like me?”

“I always liked you,” said Cas. “I just reacted poorly to it.”

“No kidding,” Dean muttered. “You could have talked to me before now.”

“I was trying to give you space.”

“Sure it had nothing to do with Hannah?” Dean asked. Cas stared at him. “You know she saw my memories. That she knows about… about us. It’s not like it didn’t occur to me that now she’s not dead, you might feel a bit guilty about that part.”

“I- Not consciously,” Cas said. “And this isn’t about Hannah.”

“This?”

“Us,” Cas said, swallowing uncomfortably. “Me. I wanted to say- If you haven’t changed your mind I mean, I thought I would ask you, well-“

“Spit it out, Cas.”

“I understand it’s two years too late,” said Cas. “But I’d like to take you up on that dinner.”

“I could be convinced,” Dean said. Cas’ hesitant smile faded off his face. “What?”

“You’re still upset,” he said. “This is a bad time.”

“I’m not upset.”

“I should have realized that perhaps it was too late and our circumstances too convoluted, and we’ve had a few too many opportunities to thoroughly misunderstand each other-“

“Cas,” Dean interrupted firmly. “I am dealing with shit right now, and most of it doesn’t have to do with you.”

“And the part that does?”

“The part that does is really fucking happy right now, alright?” said Dean, glad to see that at least brought a surprised smile to Cas’ face. “You’re cute when you smile, anyone ever tell you that?”

Cas rolled his eyes and looked away.

“So tomorrow then,” he said. “After we finish this week’s mock up.”

“Yeah, that sounds… yeah,” said Dean, finally managing a smile of his own. Cas stood.

“I’ll just… I’ll go then.”

“Wait,” said Dean, walking after him, because: “Can I kiss you?”

Cas had barely said yes before Dean leaned in. It was short and sweet, and Dean felt the remnants of his melancholy leave him afterwards.

“That was pretty good for a first kiss,” Dean said.

“We’ve kissed before.”

“I mean, you’ve kissed me,” Dean corrected. “I never kissed you. Or well, not you, you.”

Cas’ eyes flashed in comprehension.

“And?”

“And I think the fact that you can be anyone is completely wasted on me,” said Dean. “Here I am with a dude who can make himself look like a young Harrison Ford, and I still like it best when you just look like you.”

It was kind of funny, watching Cas blush like that. He stammered something or other and then practically threw himself out a window to leave. If Dean didn’t know Cas could grow wings any time he wanted he might be a little concerned for the guy.

It was morning by the time Dean finished his article, and it was just his luck that Robin was the first person in. He’d been meaning to talk to her.

“Robin?”

“Yeah?” she asked, already busy looking through the photos she’d gotten for Bela’s story of the fight outside the hotel, and Roman’s arrest by the police. “This one needs a bit of editing but I think-“

“Robin,” Dean repeated, catching her attention. “I might have… I think I changed my mind. About everything.”

Robin blinked.

“You mean about-“

“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being stuck in Lawrence for the rest of my life,” said Dean. “Maybe I like it here, and- And I don’t want to hold you back if I can’t follow through with everything we planned.”

“Is this a Cas thing?”

“This is a me thing,” Dean stressed to her. She looked him in the eye and seemed convinced.

“Okay,” she said, which Dean had expected. And then: “So I guess we’re staying here then.”

Dean had very much not expected that.

“There’s no way you’re happy staying here.”

“You’re my best friend,” said Robin. “And we’re partners. I’m not leaving.”

“I hear Bela is moving up in the world,” Dean said to her. “I think she owes me enough to drag you up with her.”

“Dean.”

“Let’s not pretend you would be anything but miserable and waiting for me to change my mind,” said Dean. Robin sighed. “And we’ll still be best friends Robin. You always dreamed bigger than me, anyway.”

Dean reached behind him and got out the present he’d ordered for Robin when he’d made his decision that he would be staying in Lawrence for a long ass time. It was the photoshopped text she’d sent him of her viral photo of Angel carrying Dean to safety. Robin laughed quietly as he handed it to her.

“Hey, when you get some kind of lifetime achievement award, you can say it all started with one picture,” said Dean.

“You’re a dumbass,” said Robin, smiling sadly at him. “So… If this isn’t a Cas thing, does that mean you two are still sort of… weird with each other.”

“Uh, not exactly,” said Dean. Robin raised an eyebrow. “I’m taking him to dinner. Tonight.”

“Wow. Wonders never cease,” said Robin, earning a hard nudge from Dean’s elbow. “I’m kidding, Dean. I’m happy for you. I’ve just got to let Cas know all the ways he has to stop you from doing dumb shit, since that will have to become my long distance job and I won’t be able to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah, I’ll miss you too,” said Dean. They hugged, and had they’re moment over with at about the time when everyone else was walking in. Cas took his seat at the desk across from Dean, and it took about five minutes flat before the rest of the office knew something was up. Becky especially seemed rather determined to figure out what, and she pestered Robin for about half the day before finally deciding she didn’t need confirmation and casually spreading the rumor that something was going on between Dean and Cas. Dean knew this because he was congratulated by Pamela, Victor, and Ash, in descending orders of sarcasm, and then called into Bobby’s office along with Cas.

“So,” Bobby said, looking between the two of them. “When were you going to tell me?”

Dean and Cas looked at each other.

“Well-“

“It only just happened-“

“We haven’t really-“

“If I’ve done anything to make you uncomfortable Castiel, I’m sorry. But it really would have been a good idea to tell me that printing your location would have caused so much damn trouble,” said Bobby. Both Dean and Cas stared at him.

“You knew I was Angel?” Cas asked in absolute shock. Bobby rolled his eyes.

“You kept trying to get every article Dean wrote about that particular hero pulled. Didn’t take a genius,” said Bobby. “I tried to help Dean get it. Remember, I told you to find out what kind of man he really is. I told you he was trying to get your articles pulled.”

“How was I supposed to know that was what you were hinting at?” Dean demanded.

“I assumed you weren’t a complete idiot,” said Bobby. “If you didn’t know I knew, what did you think I’d called you in here for?”

“Well Cas and I, we, uh, we’re- The two of us-“

“Oh so you are dating now,” said Bobby. “Mazel tov. Try not to break up messy, it’s bad for morale.”

Dean and Cas just looked at each other, utterly confused both that Bobby knew so much and was so blase about it all.

“What are you two sitting there for? Get back to work,” said Bobby gruffly, dismissing them. They left in stunned silence, but the second they were out the door, Cas began to laugh. He laughed so hard he was gasping for air and before Dean knew it he was laughing too. Because, fuck, it was all little funny, wasn’t it?

And even if it wasn’t, maybe Dean was a little bit gone on Cas Novak, and seeing him laugh like that he would have laughed with him anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been wanting to try my hand at a superhero AU for a while, and this felt like it would be a lot of fun. Let me know what you think so far.


End file.
